Advanced Technologies Development for an Automated Guided Vehicle

Our lab has worked with Symtek Automation Asia Co., Ltd for one year. This project is the second year cooperation between our lab and the company. It is hoped that the achievement of the first year will be promoted and refined more. The achievement of the first year project is the laser navigation assistance for the magnetic tape navigation, so that the moving path of the Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) is more intelligent, for instance, the AGV can avoid the obstacle on the tape; and even the tape is worn, but the AGV still can move to the right path. and the IoT technology establishes an control interface which can monitor the power situation, driving speed and location of the AGV. In addition, the AGV also can recognize the charging station and elevator location. The second year of the project still use the same AGV as the platform, there are three main directions: "upgrade the positioning accuracy", "robot arm application", and "equipments connected by IoT". After the discussion with the industry company, there are six tasks to be reached: 1. using machine vision to improve the positioning accuracy of AGV; 2. using machine vision to improve the accuracy of the charging station alignment; 3. the charging station automatically extends the charging electrode to the AGV; 4. the kinematic coordinate transformation and dynamic motion analysis for the robot arm combining with the AGV; 5. using the deep learning to help the robot arm to identify and grasp the target; 6. to establish an IoT database to storage working point information, the user can be based on the actual situation, through the control enter to add / delete the information of the working points. Therefore, the project likes the AGV functions can be improved and refined greatly to satisfy the government request to the industrial companies.