Design and development of an automated guided vehicle

This paper reports on the development of the automated guided vehicle (AGV) Hellenak that it is manufactured at the Machine Tools Laboratory of the Technical University of Crete. It has been designed with the use of parametric technology. The size of the model was 1.2 meters long and 0.7 meter wide. Vehicle's load capacity is 200 Kg and volume capacity exceeds the 1 m/sup 3/. Hellenak has a four wheel kinematics architecture (two powered wheels and two castors). A PC on board using Microsoft Windows operating system is controlling the vehicle. It can be controlled via Ethernet link from a remote terminal. Currently, it is equipped with two odometers and seven optic-electrical distance sensors, two digital cameras, four analog outputs, fourteen analog inputs and many digital inputs-outputs. Hellenak is able to move straight, make turns and spin around it's center of movement, even when loaded. A real time path-planning algorithm has been created to test the motion accuracy of the vehicle under development.