An Autonomous Guided Vehicle for Cargo Handling Applications

TLDR

The article presents an autonomous guided vehicle designed to transport ISO standard cargo containers in port environments, focusing on vehicle design, a navigation system for large outdoor high‑speed vehicles, and experimental validation. The AGV features a 17.5‑ton diesel‑hydraulic chassis with pneumatic wheels capable of 6 m/s, and uses millimeter‑wave radar sensors to detect beacons for navigation. The navigation system achieves sub‑3 cm accuracy, enabling the AGV to operate in quay and yard areas, dock with gantry cranes, and maintain a duty cycle comparable to manned vehicles.

Abstract

This article describes an autonomous guided vehicle (AGV) system designed to transport ISO standard cargo containers in port environments. The AGV consists of a large 17.5-ton chassis, which is driven and steered through a diesel-hydraulic power set. The vehicle drives on pneumatic wheels over un prepared road surfaces at speeds up to 6 m/s. The navigation system is based on the use of millimeter-wave radar sensors detecting beacons placed at known locations in the environ ment. The navigation system reliably achieves accuracies of better than 3 cm. The planning and control systems allow the AGV to operate in the quay and yard area, to dock with gantry cranes, and to achieve a duty cycle comparable to that of a conventional manned vehicle. This article concentrates on describing three principal contributions of this work: the de sign of the overall vehicle and on-board systems architecture; the development of a navigation system appropriate for large, outdoor, high-speed vehicles; and the experimental program leading to validation of the vehicle system.