Material Transport System by Cooperation of Conveyor-Loaded AGVs

Abstract

A new transport module for constructing an efficient and flexible material handling system are proposed in this paper: an AGV (Automated Guided Vehicle) module loaded a conveyor in which it is possible to hand over a transported object between two modules. The operation can solve a deadlock problem among AGVs in the process of material handling. Prototype modules are created and hand-over experiments are made to measure three kinds of hand-over costs of the modules. Control strategy is proposed and transport simulations are made for a model plant layout by using the cost values in the former experiments. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed module and control strategy in comparison with singleloop and unidirectional type transportation. © 2001, The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers. All rights reserved.