Real-World Examples of AGV Installations

Manufacturing/Textile — Tow Vehicle

The system transports rolls of textile material from a production area to cutting and storage areas. Each AGV tow vehicle tows a single trailer specially designed to transport a roll of cloth. The trailer is loaded and unloaded by overhead hoists. The cutting area has multiple delivery locations equipped with AGV call terminals. The AGVs wait in the production loading home station until a call is received for a new roll of material to be delivered to a specific station.

When an operator completes a cutting process on a roll, they will use the AGV terminal to call for another load to be delivered. An AGV waiting at the home production area (on automatic battery charge) will automatically restart and proceed to the roll loading station. An operator will load the next production roll on the towed AGV trailer and depress the release button. The AGV remotely receives its destination from the Vehicle Manager PC and proceeds to that calling location.

At the cutting stop station, the operator removes the delivered load and reloads the trailer with cut rolls. They then use the AGV’s onboard dispatch panel to select the storage area destination and release the AGV. In the storage area another operator removes the loads and sends the AGV back to the production home station.