Development of an automated guided vehicle with omnidirectional mobility for transportation of lightweight loads

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to design and to develop a control system as well as a navigation system for an omnidirectional automated guided vehicle (AGV) that can be used to transport materials to the pre-determined target location automatically. Omnidirectional drive is employed in this work since it can move in an arbitrary direction continuously without changing orientation of the AGV. This capability is desirable for applications in congested environments. Two experiments were conducted. First, the navigation system based on line following was implemented to transport materials in the factory. Second, model predictive control was used to solve the path following problem of the omnidirectional AGV.