Abstract—Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) are becoming increasingly important in flexible manufacturing systems because they can adapt to changes in facilities and factory layouts. However, AGV transport systems suffer from system shutdowns when the AGVs collide. In this study, our objective was to investigate how the interference time of taxitype AGV transport systems is altered when a passing place is installed at the pick-up and drop-off points (P/Ds) to reduce the interference between AGVs. Consequently, it was inferred that the main cause of interference during taxi-type autonomous driving was when the AGV, a type of autonomous mobile robot, waited at the P/D, and installing the passing place was effective. In recent years, there has also been a growing trend toward autonomous AGVs that use simultaneous localization and mapping for self-position estimation and environmental mapping. In autonomous driving, a high level of self-position estimation is important because it is related to interference between AGVs. However, the accuracy of AGV self-position estimation depends on the environment in which the AGV is used and its traveling speed. Therefore, our objective was to evaluate the accuracy of selfposition estimation when the environment was used and the AGV speed was varied. The results demonstrated that the speed and standard deviation were positively correlated. The standard deviation was smaller for the rectangle (b) than the wall (a) on both sides. Therefore, the possibility of interference between AGVs increases when the speed is high or when there are few features, such as walls, because the accuracy of self-position estimation decreases.

Keywords—Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs), taxi, transportation system, travel interference, Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), self-position estimation

Cite: Tomoya A. Matsui, Yasuaki B. Omi, Toshiki C. Hirogaki, and Eiichi D. Aoyama, "Investigation of Travel Interference Problems in Taxi-Type AGV Transport Systems and Its Estimation under SLAM Operations," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 296-303, 2024.

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