The Evolution of AGVs and AMRs
While not new, mobile robotics are evolving rapidly.
Warehousing has always been a largely manual operation, but increasingly, that landscape is changing. With rising labor costs and shortages and improved technologies, automated guided vehicles (AGVs) and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) are taking on bigger roles every day. With advanced technology, expect that to increase exponentially going forward.
To understand where the industry sits currently with AGVs and AMRs, it’s good to have some perspective on how we arrived here. The “automatic” industrial vehicle dates to the late 1940’s when AGVs entered the market. They followed embedded floor wires and remained largely unchanged for 40 years. In the1980s inertial and laser guidance navigation entered the market, which unlocked the capability of AGVs for all the functional tasks of warehousing. Additionally, the accelerated advancement of market standard safety sensors and systems since the early 2000s make AGVs a safe choice to operate around human employees.
Navigation technology is now dominated by simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), which has contributed to increase the speed, accuracy, and ease of integration into existing brownfield sites – since added infrastructure is no longer needed for quick installation.
While AGVs were maturing, AMRs entered the picture. Using sensing like dual purpose navigation with safety sensors, LiDAR, cameras, and combined with their small size and light loads, these mobile robots can move independently of any tracks throughout an industrial facility making them highly flexible and adaptable. And in doing so the demand for AMRs has skyrocketed in the past decade. Today, AMRs outpace AGVs in terms of interest and adoption, and they’ve become the go-to technology in many forms, and in particular for fulfillment use cases and assembly systems in manufacturing facilities.
As we move forward, the lines between the generally accepted definitions of AGVs and AMRs are blurring. But this is all with one key twist—AGVs can handle much larger loads, while lifting high and accurately for storage and retrieval applications with same precision and speed as floor level applications.
In the end analysis, optimizing the capability of mobile automation will be a blend of AMRs and AGVs. Modern warehouses and manufacturing facilities can connect the two types of automation, even from different suppliers, with fast emerging and adaptive AI and software integration standards such as VDA5050.
As a final thought, no conversation about industrial mobile robotics is complete without also recognizing the coming second wave of automated truck loading (ATL) applications and truck unloading (ATUL) applications. Advanced robotics has these applications a practical reality, which will soon revolutionize this last frontier of high volume industrial automation. ATL and ATUL integrate with facility management and control software for order fulfillment and load planning. One can anticipate AGVs to be a big part of the execution of both of these tasks, and continued coordination between AMRs and AGVs to serve as an integral piece of the puzzle.
The future of modern mobile robotics heralds unlimited potential in the warehousing and manufacturing environments and there is no better time than now to start embracing that future.
Source: Mark Stevenson, Balyo
To find out more about MHI’s MAG Industry Group: https://www.mhi.org/mag
For further articles/podcasts from MAG:
Common Misconceptions with Mobile Robotics
Cybersecurity and Your Robotics
Essential Sensors for Safe AMRs
Integrating Mobile Robots Into Your Operations
Building Sustainability Through Mobile Automation
Podcast: Energizing Mobile Automation
Top Misconceptions Of Mobile Automation
