Increased Agility by Using Autonomous AGVs in Reconfigurable Factories

Abstract

Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) have come up to a quite familiar picture of nowadays manufacturing sites and in general they follow some rigidly given maps of the shopfloor. Future-oriented concepts require a much more agile approach that allows AGVs to continue its logistic tasks at the shopfloor securely and safely though being confronted with recently newly aligned facilities, new barriers and boundaries without necessary reprogramming the AGV`s environment in front.The actual paper deals with solutions which were worked out in the research and learning factory “smartfactory@tugraz” where all relevant facilities for these research goals have been available. Additional insights and results derive from the research facility of the Center Connected Industry and its industrial application eco system. So numerous Mobile Working Stations (MWS), the latest version of a Real-Time Locating System (RTLS) and a commercially available AGV belong to the core equipment of the presented research.As a result there could be found, that the specified requirements and new applications of future production and logistic concepts can be achieved via dynamic targets. With this development, targets can be changed locally and the AGV automatically moves to the current target position, without necessary changes in the control software.