Automated Warehousing and Manufacturing Pilot Plant: Hardware and Software

Abstract

In today’s factory, totally automated warehouse has become increasingly integrated with the manufacturing process in order to reduce cost and attain high degrees of flexibility in storage. A prototipe of a totally automatic warehousing and manufacturing plant is being constructed in the “Departamento de Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica, de Computadores y de Sistemas” (DIEECS) in the School of Engineering at the University of Oviedo. The whole warehousing and transport system has being designed at this Department. It consist of an automated pallet storage by stacker crane and an automated guided vehicle system controlled by the same host computer. This paper will be a brief description of the automated warehouse and, in detail, of the Automated Guided Vehicle System (AGVS) and the inteligence distribution through the whole system.