An Accurate and Robust Flexible Guidance System for Indoor Industrial Environments

Abstract

This work presents the development of a flexible industrial guidance system used to guide Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) in indoor industrial environments. Typically, wireless guidance systems are composed of path-tracking and localization methods linked to follow a certain route. This paper focuses on the localization approach that permits industrial vehicles to operate indoors with the grade of accuracy, repeatability and reliability required by industrial applications. A key point is that, apart from accuracy, the position estimates should be performed at a high sample rate in order to permit the path tracker to follow the route properly. Robustness of absolute positioning is also crucial in industrial applications. An Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is adopted to fuse the information provided by a laser navigation system and odometry. The effectiveness of the development is tested using a custom modified commercial industrial vehicle operating in an industrial setting.