AN AUTONOMOUS GUIDED VEHICLE FOR CARGO HANDLING APPLICATIONS

This article describes an autonomous guided vehicle (AGV) system desig ned to transport ISO standard cargo containers in port environments. T he AGV consists of a large 17.5-ton chassis, which is driven and steer ed through a diesel-hydraulic power set The vehicle drives on pneumati c wheels over unprepared road surfaces as speeds up to 6 m/s. The navi gation system is based on the use of millimeter-wave radar sensors det ecting beacons placed at known locations in the environment. The navig ation system reliably achieves accuracies of better than 3 cm. The pla nning and control systems allow the AGV to operate in the quay and yar d area, to dock with gantry cranes, and to achieve a duty cycle compar able to that of a conventional manned vehicle. This article concentrat es on describing three principal contributions of this work: the desig n of the overall vehicle and on-board systems architecture, the develo pment of a navigation system appropriate for large, outdoor high-speed vehicles; and the experimental program leading to validation of the v ehicle system.