Autonomous navigation of an automated guided vehicle in industrial environments

The research presented in this paper approaches the issue of navigation using an automated guided vehicle (AGV) in industrial environments. The work describes the navigation system of a flexible AGV intended for operation in partially structured warehouses and with frequent changes in the floor plant layout. This is achieved by incorporating a high degree of on-board autonomy and by decreasing the amount of manual work required by the operator when establishing the a priori knowledge of the environment. The AGV's autonomy consists of the set of automatic tasks, such as planner, perception, path planning and path tracking, that the industrial vehicle must perform to accomplish the task required by the operator. The integration of these techniques has been tested in a real AGV working on an industrial warehouse environment. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.