bright future for agvs

While AGVs have not reached the levels predicted by some, they can offer improved safety and new developments, such as automatic truck-unloading systems, could revolutionise the market, explains Mark Venables Several decades ago automated guided vehicles (AGVs) were being heralded as the saviour for automotive OEMs material handling requirements. Plants such as Ford's Cologne facility, with its legions of AGVs, were to be the flagship for future factories, but that utopian vision has fallen some way short of the reality. Not that AGVs are scarce among the global automotive manufacturing facilities, but their use is less universal than the earlier hype or than the AGV vendors would have had us believe.