A vision-based guidance method for autonomous guided vehicles

Guiding technology is one of the key technologies for the automated guided vehicles (AGV). A vision-based guiding system obtains the environment image with a camera, gets the parameters of the road by processing the image and guides the AGV navigations. Although pasting color or reflecting tape on the ground as a guide line can provide road information for an AGV, but since the tape can not provide position information for the AGV, it is necessary to use other devices to get the position information. A new vision-based guiding method which makes use of a novel artificial landmark called MR (Mobile Robot) code, is presented in this paper, and a localization algorithm using the MR code is also given. Since the paper-made MR codes can be pasted on the path easily, and can provides position and navigation information for an AGV, it can be used easily in a production line. Experiments have also been carried out to show the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed method.