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Automated Material
Transport System
Application
A robotic lift truck stacking
pallets
The Problem
Until the scientists and engineers at NREC developed the AMTS
solution, companies had limited options to relying on driver-operated
forklifts and tug vehicles for transporting materials and
stacking pallets in factories and warehouses.
Current automated guided vehicles (AGVs) are limited by their
inability to "see” their surroundings. And, in
order to function at all, they required complex setup and
costly changes to facility infrastructure. For example, companies
using conventional AGVs have to install special sensors, jigs
and attachments for an automated forklift to pick up a pallet
of materials.
The Solution
NREC scientists and engineers devised a computer vision system
that can be used with any mobile robot application. Today’s
cost-effective AMTS solution works effectively around the
clock, with lights out in many cases and with less damage
to vehicles than humans cause. There is typically no need
to retrofit the facility infrastructure to accommodate the
AGVs.
These AMTS-equipped automated vehicles — robotic forklifts
and tugs — find their way around by virtue of a low-cost,
high-speed positioning system developed at NREC.
NREC equips each vehicle with a combination of cameras and
laser rangefinders for navigation and control. With a downward-looking
camera mounted to the bottom of the forklift, the robot captures
visual cues and matches them to a pre-stored database of floor
imagery that becomes its map for navigating the floor.
Using a forward-looking camera system, the forklift images
the side of the trailer to find pallets for transfer to tug
vehicle wagons. The forks are inserted into the pallet holes,
and the forklift lifts the pallet. While it is backing out
of the trailer, the robotic forklift relies on its laser rangefinder
to safety remove the tight-fitting pallet from the trailer.
The robotic tug vehicle uses the same downward vision technology
to move around and position its wagons for loading and unloading.
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