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Heavy Lifting
CLYDESDALES
AGV's come in some impressive sizes. Let's say you need to move earth movers from one assembly station to the next or perhaps aluminum ingots, 106 tons at a time - no problem, it's been done by some very special Automatic Guided Vehicles. While these AGV's are descended from the "university hallway robots" I saw roaming the halls of MIT's Project MAC building back in the 1970's they are obviously several steps removed on the evolutionary chain. These are workhorses - the Clydesdales* of the AGV business.
Picture by Jervis B. Webb Company
Picture by Jervis B. Webb Company
THE FAMILY TREE
AGVs for the most part have been used on the shop floor. They are now venturing out onto the loading dock and into the trailers of trucks parked there. Soon they may also be driving the trucks out on the open road using the network of roads and highways of the world as one large guidepath. As AGVs have evolved over the past few years their family tree has developed several distinctive branches.
The more established branches of the AGV genealogy are: Mail delivery, Package delivery, Trailer unloader, Trailer loader, High bay stacking, In process material transfer, Forklift, Tugger, Unit load hauler, and so on. We have looked at a few of these branches already and will check out the rest of them in detail as the series progresses. Some of the characteristics they have in common are based on the fact that most of them have to deal with the shop floor environment which is populated with people and other obstacles. Contact bumpers are a common way of alerting the controls to stop the AGVs after they have touched something. New laser range finder bumper systems are becoming available now that measure out to obstacles in the vehicles path and stop the vehicle if necessary but do it without contact with the object. In many cases the wheels are shielded or enclosed to keep people away from them and to make the vehicles "slick" or streamlined - this in case they brush up against something or slide along it.
SOON TO BE IN PRODUCTION
The newest branch of course is the driverless vehicle capable of negotiating city traffic autonomously - demonstrated in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. While demonstrated successfully, it has yet to be put into production - the US Army is expected to be the first customer for this version of AGV. With the US Congress having implied that they will find the money for them, they have ordered the US armed forces to convert one third of all their combat vehicles to driverless operation "as soon as possible and before 2015." That gives them seven years or less to run all of those vehicles through a major maintenance facility to do this field change. This will be the largest single order for AGVs in history and may signal unprecedented rapid growth for this branch of AGVs. The US Army will need nearly 400,000 systems before 2015 to meet its part of the congressional mandate. Other branches of the US armed forces will need similar numbers. What company(s) will provide them to the armed forces remains to be seen. Likely companies are the large government contractors, necessary to handle an order of this size, and the contractors who have the maintenance contracts to do repairs and field changes to each of the types of ground vehicles the armed forces own.
It is expected that automakers around the world will adopt these modifications to the vehicles they make to meet the European Union's mandate to cut traffic fatalities in half by 2010. Plans are that they will be true Automatic Guided Vehicles and provide a Taxi like riding experience for the people in the vehicle. Perhaps it will be activated by a green button (AutoDrive) next to the blue button (OnStar)?
* Clydesdale is a breed of draft horse derived from the very hard-working farm horses of Clydesdale, Scotland, and named for that region. They were bread as warhorses large enough and strong enough to carry the increased weights of armor used on both rider and horse in combat just before gunpowder took the field. The breed was extensively used for pulling heavy loads in rural, industrial and urban settings, their common use extending into the 1960s when they were a still a familiar sight pulling the carts of milk, vegetable, and probably most famously - beer wagons.
GO ROBOTS !
Heavy Lifting
November 19, 2007
CLYDESDALESAGV's come in some impressive sizes. Let's say you need to move earth movers from one assembly station to the next or perhaps aluminum ingots, 106 tons at a time - no problem, it's been done by some very special Automatic Guided Vehicles. While these AGV's are descended from the "university hallway robots" I saw roaming the halls of MIT's Project MAC building back in the 1970's they are obviously several steps removed on the evolutionary chain. These are workhorses - the Clydesdales* of the AGV business.
Picture by Jervis B. Webb Company
Picture by Jervis B. Webb Company
THE FAMILY TREE
AGVs for the most part have been used on the shop floor. They are now venturing out onto the loading dock and into the trailers of trucks parked there. Soon they may also be driving the trucks out on the open road using the network of roads and highways of the world as one large guidepath. As AGVs have evolved over the past few years their family tree has developed several distinctive branches.
The more established branches of the AGV genealogy are: Mail delivery, Package delivery, Trailer unloader, Trailer loader, High bay stacking, In process material transfer, Forklift, Tugger, Unit load hauler, and so on. We have looked at a few of these branches already and will check out the rest of them in detail as the series progresses. Some of the characteristics they have in common are based on the fact that most of them have to deal with the shop floor environment which is populated with people and other obstacles. Contact bumpers are a common way of alerting the controls to stop the AGVs after they have touched something. New laser range finder bumper systems are becoming available now that measure out to obstacles in the vehicles path and stop the vehicle if necessary but do it without contact with the object. In many cases the wheels are shielded or enclosed to keep people away from them and to make the vehicles "slick" or streamlined - this in case they brush up against something or slide along it.
SOON TO BE IN PRODUCTION
The newest branch of course is the driverless vehicle capable of negotiating city traffic autonomously - demonstrated in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. While demonstrated successfully, it has yet to be put into production - the US Army is expected to be the first customer for this version of AGV. With the US Congress having implied that they will find the money for them, they have ordered the US armed forces to convert one third of all their combat vehicles to driverless operation "as soon as possible and before 2015." That gives them seven years or less to run all of those vehicles through a major maintenance facility to do this field change. This will be the largest single order for AGVs in history and may signal unprecedented rapid growth for this branch of AGVs. The US Army will need nearly 400,000 systems before 2015 to meet its part of the congressional mandate. Other branches of the US armed forces will need similar numbers. What company(s) will provide them to the armed forces remains to be seen. Likely companies are the large government contractors, necessary to handle an order of this size, and the contractors who have the maintenance contracts to do repairs and field changes to each of the types of ground vehicles the armed forces own.
It is expected that automakers around the world will adopt these modifications to the vehicles they make to meet the European Union's mandate to cut traffic fatalities in half by 2010. Plans are that they will be true Automatic Guided Vehicles and provide a Taxi like riding experience for the people in the vehicle. Perhaps it will be activated by a green button (AutoDrive) next to the blue button (OnStar)?
* Clydesdale is a breed of draft horse derived from the very hard-working farm horses of Clydesdale, Scotland, and named for that region. They were bread as warhorses large enough and strong enough to carry the increased weights of armor used on both rider and horse in combat just before gunpowder took the field. The breed was extensively used for pulling heavy loads in rural, industrial and urban settings, their common use extending into the 1960s when they were a still a familiar sight pulling the carts of milk, vegetable, and probably most famously - beer wagons.
GO ROBOTS !
Paul F. Grayson - Chief Engineer
AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC, LLC
Racing to build technology that saves soldier's lives.
390 4-Mile Rd. S.
Traverse City, MI 49686-8411
(231) 946-0187, (231) 883-4463 Cell
pgrayson@aimagic.org
http://aimagic.org
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/robotcluboftraversecitymi/
http://www.controleng.com/index.asp?layout=blog&blog_id=1180000318
AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC, LLC
Racing to build technology that saves soldier's lives.
390 4-Mile Rd. S.
Traverse City, MI 49686-8411
(231) 946-0187, (231) 883-4463 Cell
pgrayson@aimagic.org
http://aimagic.org
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/robotcluboftraversecitymi/
http://www.controleng.com/index.asp?layout=blog&blog_id=1180000318
Posted by Paul Grayson on November 19, 2007 | Comments (0)
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