Simulation Tool for Hybrid AGVs based on IEC-61131

AGVs or automatic guided vehicles are unmanned battery-powered trucks used to transport loads in logistics and production. They are equipped with a controller, normally an industrial programmable logic controller (PLC), that processes the information of the guiding sensor and computes the signals to control the motors with the aim of following the desired trajectory. The tracking error, the traveled distance, and the time to execute a task depend on the parameters of the controller. Indeed, parameters that work in a circuit may not work in a different one. Thus, the fine-tuning of the controller is a key factor. In order to improve this process, in this work, an IEC61131-based simulation tool has been developed to evaluate the performance of the controller with different trajectories and search the configuration that provides the minimum guide error. The tool can run on a computer or on the AGVs PLC. The simulation tool can execute the same code that is running in the AGV