GEOMOVE: Detached AGVs for Cooperative Transportation of Large and Heavy Loads in the Aeronautic Industry

Some manufacturing sectors require handling very large pieces, such as airplane fuselages and wings in the aeronautic industry. This presents a challenge that is usually overcome by manual and tedious handling of these large parts or the use of mechanically attached Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs). In this paper, we show the implementation and testing of a wireless (detached) cooperative transportation solution, with no need of mechanical attachment between AGVs. Inspired by the mutual tidal locking of astronomical bodies, we derive the expressions for coordinated movements between AGVs, allowing to maintain their relative distance and orientation for cooperative transportation. We provide details on the implemented system pipeline and validation with two research robots and subsequently with two industrial AGVs, designed and manufactured by Aritex in Spain, demonstrating coordinated movements with alignment errors in the scale of millimeter/below degree in real tests. This solution overcomes the need for mechanical attachments, does not depend on specific details or configurations of the vehicles and could reduce the number of robots required, enabling the cost-efficient use of medium and small size AGVs in the cooperative transportation of large parts.