7 fresh ways to think about AGVs

摘要

When automatic guided vehicles (AGV) first surfaced in the mid-1950s, inventor Mac Barrett named it a "driverless vehicle." Unfortunately, for the next few decades it was the bane of the materials handling family. It was expensive (costing $100,000+ per unit), inflexible (could only go one fixed path using wires), not very smart (drop a pallet in its path and it stops) and had a bit of a weight problem (heavy batteries with hefty platforms). It was relegated to menial tasks mostly in manufacturing, carrying loads or towing carts from Point A to Point B.As a value proposition to displace human beings, yesterday's AGVs had a long way to go. "Human beings are the most sophisticated robots the world has ever seen," says Bill Torrens, director of ADAM Systems Group for RMT Robotics. "If you really want to displace the labor associated with a human being, you've got to mimic its operational capability."