Effective Real-Time Wireless Control of an Autonomous Guided Vehicle

Wireless communication systems used in industrial environments must guarantee that the information is sent and received within precise time-bounds. However the nature of the radio channels and the medium access control (MAC) generates random communication delays. For networked control systems, these delays can cause severe performance problems. This paper presents an autonomous guided vehicle (AGV) path tracking control system whose closed-loop consists on a vehicle connected over a wireless network to the controller. To mitigate the negative effects of delays, we propose a Kalman-based network delay estimator in the controller, that provides effective control performance. Our approach is compared to previously proposed statistical estimation algorithms by evaluating the vehicle's travelling time and path deviation.