AUTOMATIC GUIDED VEHICLES-A FEASIBILITY STUDY IN THE CONTEXT OF HILLY ROADS

Abstract

The advent of high speed computers and cheap computing facilities has lead to tremendous advances in the area of Automated guided vehicles. However so far their uses have been restricted to factory environment and load handling. In this dissertation inductive track guidance approach has been taken for AGVs followed by assessment of their potential for use in hilly reads, primarily for the point of view of minimising accidents. The road accidents are frequent and fatal in hilly areas due to the curvature, slopes and narrowness of hilly roads. It is difficult to drive in hills as compared to roads in plains. The vehicle in the present dissertation is supposed to follow a inductive track on the road. It can sense its position with respect to track using control antenna and this position data is sent to control system which bring it back to the track. The control strategy is based on fuzzy logic as this approach is close to human beings in interpreting the data and provides an efficient way of accommodating nonlinearties, ambiguities and uncertainties. A practical implementation has been done is which the fuzzy logic strategy is manipulated with the help of software program and computer output is feed in a steeper motor for adjusting the direction of vehicle