Automated Guided Vehicles (Agv): Searching a Path in the Flexible Manufacturing Systems

Manufacturing systems are undergoing a noticeable evolution due to an intense technological progress in industrial robotics. Serial production has evolved into the concept of Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS), which encapsulate processes in automatic equipment that are capable of executing different operations, that before be performed in several stages and diverse equipments. Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) systems have been frequently used as material handling equipment in manufacturing systems since the last two decades. Particularly, AGV's with trailers are, and will continue to be, the backbone of the material transport industry. The use of these systems has taken the attention of experts and researchers. They are numerous studies concerning AGV with trailers systems in literature; few of them deal with the adaptation of these systems into FMS. In this paper, a study of the trajectories and a simulation model of a hypothetical system, which included a FMS environment, were developed. In addition, a potential field's method was explored in order to improve the ability of detecting obstacles in AGV's with trailers moving through stations.