Control Engineering

Paul Grayson

The Ant Farm
November 16, 2007

If I am remembering it right, I saw my first AGV about 41 years ago and did what most people do when they first encounter a robot (tease or torment it) -  I stuck my toe out into its path to see if it really would halt as they said it would (ready of course to pull back quickly if it didn't stop).  Though it was not carrying a load it made a complaining sound and came to a halt.  The plant tour guide leaned over and hit the reset to send it on its way.  They moved at half-walking speed so that if they were behind you it was unlikely they would need to pass you.   These early versions were quiet,  low to the ground, yellow, and alternated between carrying heavy loads and traveling empty.  The tour guide explained about the wire that was imbedded in the floor and the odd sort of hitch-pin like sensor that you raised to take them out of service and move them off their "track".  That was about all there was to it then.  

The changes since then have done a lot to increase the "coolness" factor.  So much so that people who work with AGVs try to incorporate the letters AGV into the license plates for their cars.  AGV's have reached a point where the many behaviors programmed combine to create the illusion of life.  One AGV expert told that that if you watch the AGV's on the plant floor from the mezzanine it looks like the activity in an ant farm.  The AGV's truly look like they are alive and intelligent since with recently developed software they are constantly make decisions about the best route to take, the best speed to travel at, the sequence in which loads are to be moved to maximize plant productivity etc. and like ants carry impressive loads much larger than themselves.



Dynamic routing allows AGVs to pick an alternate route to the destination based on guidepath conditions such as a blocked aisle, a temporary delay such as an AGV transferring its load or traffic congestion will influence what the best route to the destination is.  

Dynamic job scheuling software acts as an automatic dispatcher, choosing which AGV to assign to do which job and when to do it to maximixe throughput of the system. The best of what human dispatchers do has been captured in software and done at a pace only a machine can handle. 

Google Lunar X-Prize update
The preliminary rules now consist of 23 pages.  Part of what you get for the $10,000 registration fee is the right to comment on the rules. While this entry fee may sound high, F.I.R.S.T. - a high school robotics competition has an entry fee of $5,000.

GO ROBOTS !

Posted by Paul Grayson on November 16, 2007 | Comments (0)