Radio-Frequency Guidance System for Path-Following Industrial Autonomous Guided Vehicles

Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) are mobile robots that are capable of navigating with little or no human intervention. The AGVs can be found in different fields of application such as measurements, scanning, and industrial automation. In industry, the AGVs are used to improve efficiency, productivity and precision. This growing use of AGVs is driving the research towards developing and optimizing navigation accuracy. In this paper, a lateral misalignment radio-frequency sensor for navigation of the automated vehicle is presented. The navigation principle is based on laying down a path of resonating elements that guides the vehicle along the required trajectory. The wireless sensor design presented in this article is capable of detecting deviations from the desired path in the range of 10 cm. However, one of the key features of the proposed sensor is its scaling capability for different sensing ranges and operating frequencies that may be required in different practical scenarios where detection of larger values of lateral misalignment is needed. The sensing concept was verified using electromagnetic simulations, and finally, a navigation control logic is proposed.