An ultrasonic navigation automatic guided vehicle system used in CIMS

Automatic guided vehicles (AGVs) play a more and more important role in the material handling system of modern computer integrated manufacturing systems (CIMS). Overcoming the drawbacks of traditional ultrasonic sensors, a high-precision, low-cost ultrasonic navigation system used for AGVs is developed. The receiver beacons are located at the docking workstation and transmitter beacons are mounted on the AGVs. The electromagnetic wave is used for system synchronization based on the TOF counter. To ensure accurate docking, a transducer equalizer is employed to reach high ranging precision (1mm) with low-cost ultrasonic transducer. In this paper, the design, operation principle and system construction of the AGV ultrasonic navigation system are presented. Experimental results show that approach can meet the requirement of the automatic material handling system of CIMS.