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DESIGN OF AGV WITH MOBILE COMMUNICATION

Article · May 2015

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 International Journal of Advances in Electronics and Computer Science, ISSN: 2393-2835 Volume-2, Issue-5, May-2015

DESIGN OF AGV WITH MOBILE COMMUNICATION

1
M.RUKMINI SAI RUPA SRI, 2Y.SHIVRAJ NARAYAN, 3K.LOKENDER

VNR Vignana Jyothi Institute of Technology, VNR Vignana Jyothi Institute of Technology, MVSR Engineering College
Email: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract- Automatic guided vehicles (AGVs) that run automatically and are controlled by computers have been used in a
wide range of fields and applications, such as on factory production floors, in warehouses, and in distribution centres, and
have received more attention as a mode of transportation because they do not produce CO2 emissions that harm the
environment. Due to the abundant availability of human labour at lower costs, these are rarely implemented in India. Even
then implementing AGVs will bring many benefits to the organization like improved safety, reliability and efficiency. The
design of AGV can be quite challenging and the cost and performance of the system are greatly impacted. The main
objective of this work is to design and develop a cost effective AGV. This paper presents the design of AGV and its control
using ATmega16, along with its fabrication which is a line follower. The robot is reprogrammable and changes can be made
so it suits the real industrial environment. It is allowed to follow accurately the magnetic tape path laid along the flat floors.
Test runs are conducted by programming for a predesigned path providing it with an imitating industrial environment and
also obstacles in its path. PID control is also included in this vehicle for smoother movements along the path.

Keywords: AGV, ATmega16, Line follower

I. INTRODUCTION automatic guided vehicle. Their purpose is to keep

the device on track as per the signals received. These
An automated guided vehicle (AGV) is a mobile are designed for embedded applications unlike
robot that follows markers or wires in the floor, or microprocessors used in personal computers or other
uses vision or lasers. These are most often used in general purpose applications.
industrial applications to move materials around a The microcontroller used in AGV is ATmega 16.
manufacturing facility or a warehouse [1] [5]. These The reasons for using this microcontroller are:
are intelligent material handling systems. Automated • Cost effective
guided vehicles increase efficiency and reduce costs • C cross compiler and library is available for
by helping to automate a manufacturing facility or programming
warehouse. AGVs are employed in nearly every • Availability of UART communication- can
industry, including, pulp, paper, metals, newspaper, directly communicate with PC
and general manufacturing. Transporting materials
such as food, linen or medicine in hospitals is also
done [5]. The design of an AGV has to be done to
maximize its usability. The basic concept of AGV is a
battery-powered, driverless vehicle with
programming capabilities to select its path and
position at loading or unloading station. The
mechanical design concepts combine the knowledge
of various mechanical parts such as motors, wheels,
its structure and other essential mechanical parts. The
electronic concepts include the concepts of
microcontroller, voltage regulator, motor drivers and
other electronic parts required for the system [6].
The vehicle is designed to trace the path and avoid
obstacles automatically using IR sensors [2]. The path
laid is a magnetic black tape [3]. The microcontroller
used in this vehicle is Atmega16 [4] which store the
instructions for the running of the vehicle.

II. DESIGN SPECIFICATIONS

A. Microcontroller
Fig.1 Pin Diagram of ATmega16 Microcontroller
A microcontroller is a small computer on a single
integrated circuit containing a processor core, a FEATURES:
memory unit and programmable input/output  Advanced RISC Architecture
peripherals. They perform actuating function of an  131 Powerful Instructions

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 International Journal of Advances in Electronics and Computer Science, ISSN: 2393-2835 Volume-2, Issue-5, May-2015

 Most Single Clock Cycle Execution C. DTMF DECODER MT8870

 32 x 8 General Purpose Working Registers
 Up to 6 MIPS Throughput at 16MHz The MT8870D/MT8870D-1 monolithic DTMF
 Fully Static Operation receiver offers small size, low power consumption
 Non-volatile Program and Data Memories and high performance. Its architecture consists of a
 16k Bytes of In-System Self-Programmable band split filter section, which separates the high and
Flash low group tones, followed by a digital counting
 512K Bytes EEPROM section which verifies the frequency and duration of
the received tones before passing the corresponding
 On-chip Analog Comparator
code to the output bus.
 Two 8-bit Timer/Counters with Separate
Prescaler, Compare
 One 16-bit Timer/Counter with Separate
Prescaler, Compare and Capture mode
 Real Time Counter with Separate Oscillator
 Four PWM Channels
 8-channel, 10-bit ADC
 Byte-oriented Two-wire Serial Interface
 Programmable Serial USART
 Power-on Reset and Programmable Brown-
out Detection
 Internal Calibrated RC Oscillator
 External and Internal Interrupt Sources
 32 Programmable I/O Lines
 4.5-5.5V for ATmega16 Fig. 3 (a) DTMF decoder circuit (b) DTMF decoder functional
decoding table
 0-16 MHz for ATmega16
B. MOTOR DRIVER L293D D. MECHANICAL AND ELECTRICAL
ASPECTS OF DEVICE
It is an electronic integrated circuit which enables
a voltage to be applied across a load on either For building automatic device a platform type
direction. It allows a circuit full control over a chassis was used. It was equipped with two dc
standard electric DC motor, i.e., with an H-bridge, a motors, two wheels and sliding sets, in order to
microcontroller, logic chip or remote control can increase stability, a rechargeable battery of 12V,
electrically command the motor to go forward, electric power for motors and electronic management
reverse, and coast. The current provided by the MCU control, empowered with Atmega16 microcontroller.
is of the order 20mA and that required by the motor is Platform is provided with an emergency circuit-
approximately 500mA. Hence the motor cannot be breaker. LED diodes, infrared sensors and an
controlled directly by Multipoint Control Unit (MCU) ultrasonic sensor are mounted at centre bottom of
and we need an interface between the MCU and platform. Infrared light emitted by diodes towards
motor. white line is reflected to all eight sensors, these send
A double pole double throw relay can generally a logical signal to microcontroller using a sensor port.
achieve the same electrical functionality as an H- Motor driver control circuit drive motors using Pulse
bridge, but a H-bridge would be preferable when WithModulation (PWM) technique.
smaller physical size, high speed switching, low
driving voltage is needed or when the wearing of III. DRIVE AND CONTROL SYSTEM
mechanical parts is undesirable. The term H-bridge is
derived from the typical graphical representation of The robot was designed as a three wheeler robot with
such circuit, which is built with four transistors as two independently controllable wheels at the back
switches. and a free un-powered caster wheel in the front. Such
a configuration provided very convenient forward and
backward locomotion, as well as steering in any
direction just by controlling the speeds and directions
of the motors. The caster provided will stabilize the
vehicle in turnings. The robot is controlled by
ATmega16 micro-controller based system, using
feedback signal from numerous sensors.
Microcontroller generated PWM signals was utilized
to control the drive motor’s speeds. Two PWM
signals were used to control the speeds of two drive
Fig.2 (a) Control Circuit of Motor Driver (b) H – Bridge motors of AGV. The motion is planned in such a way
Design of AGV With Mobile Communication

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 International Journal of Advances in Electronics and Computer Science, ISSN: 2393-2835 Volume-2, Issue-5, May-2015

that the vehicle slows down if it comes across an V. COMMUNICATION BETWEEN USER
obstacle. AND AGV SYSTEM

Depending on the signals given by sensors either both As we have stated earlier that user (operator)
the motors work in the same direction or one of the loads the AGV for the stations. It is sent by calling
motor works while the other motor reverses its the AGV and has to give input in the following way.
motion. When one motor works and the other motor • Input :S1*I1*Q1#S2*I2*Q3##
reverses, then this condition causes the AGV to turn HereS1 and S2 are the stations where delivery of
in the direction of the motor which has reversed. loads is to be done. I1 and I2represent the item that
When both the motors continue to work in forward has to be transferred for their respective stations S1
direction then the AGV will move in a straight path. and S2. Q1 and Q2 represent the quantity of the loads
Thus making use of these conditions the AGV is I1 and I2 respectively. ‘*’ symbol separates the
made to follow the pre-defined path. station, item name and its quantity, ‘#’ separates
inputs and ‘##’ indicates the end of input and the
IV. LINE DETECTION AND OBSTACLE AGV starts once this is typed.
AVOIDANCE Ex: 1*5*3#2*4*5##
So from the above input the user enters station
The system is provided with an array of sensors numbers separated by #, item to be loaded or
for path tracing and obstacle detection in the front. 8 unloaded, the quantity of the item required each of
pairs of IR receiver and transmitter are used for this them separated by * and any number of points can be
purpose. These IR sensors sense the track using the given in any order. ## is pressed to instruct AGV
light reflected from the black line on a light system to stop receive number from DTMF decoder
background. The sensors then depending on the and all the point received are stored in sorted stack
position send the signals to the Micro-Controller. The (array).
signals are processed and depending on the signals This raw data is received by the DTMF decoder
received the microcontroller gives the corresponding which is given to the microcontroller to convert into
output to the motor control module such that the station numbers. As we know each number pressed in
AGV continues to follow the path. the mobile has different frequencies and DTMF
According to their detection, the black path is decoder differentiates them and sends the
traced along the layout and the vehicle keeps on corresponding binary codes to the microprocessor and
moving till it reaches its destination as per the the microprocessor manipulates the input and sends
communication code. In this way the vehicle commands to the AGV.
continues to follow the pre-defined path which is a
black line on a white background. V. PROGRAMMING THE AGV
Ultrasonic sensor is used for obstacle detection
purpose. This sensor converts the distance into Most commonly used language for programming
corresponding analog voltage, which is converted to microcontrollers is Assembly, but for this design
digital by microcontroller using ADC (Analog to embedded C language is considered, being much
Digital Conversion) conversion. The converted digital faster and easier than Assembly languages.The
value is decoded to distance using a formula. programming for AVR ATmega microcontrollers is
Whenever the vehicle encounters an obstacle along done in Embedded C language as it is simple in
its path, it is programmed to slow down or halt if the understanding and can be used by any user with basic
obstacle is not removed for a longer duration, to save programming skills. Also it easy to develop and
battery life. A buzzer is provided for emergency maintain in this language whose execution is faster.It
indications. provides a single development platform for Atmel’s
8-bits, 32-bits and ARM Cortex-M families of AVR
microcontrollers. AVR studio 6 is a full software
development environment with an editor, simulator,
programmer, etc.It comes with its own integrated C
compiler, the AVR GNU C Compiler (GCC)
eliminating a third party C compiler.

An algorithm is generated to get an explicit idea

before starting the programming. Initially, AGV
receives the data from the main server. The system
compares the received data with the existing data to
start its move. If the data matches, with the help of
sensors the vehicle traces the path and moves to the
respective stations. After finishing its travel for the
given code, it moves to the base station and waits
Fig. 4 Eight sensor strip on the vehicle

Design of AGV With Mobile Communication

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 International Journal of Advances in Electronics and Computer Science, ISSN: 2393-2835 Volume-2, Issue-5, May-2015

there till it receives the next data. If during its travel

the next data is received, it stores that data and
executes it only after finishing its previous task.
The vehicle follows the above algorithm for its
run:
main() // start of main function
{
init_inte(); // interrupt function
InitPorts(); // port calling function
InitPWM(); // Pulse With Modulation Function
While(1)
{
Fig.5 (a) Arena for vehicle movement (b) AGV taking Input
Start AGV(); //function to start AGV using Cell phone (c) Vehicle stopping at a Station
}
} VIII. RESULTS
Call interrupt() // interrupt calling function when
the mobile on the vehicle receives a call from user Test runs are conducted in a dummy industrial setup
{ for checking the proper functioning of the robot. The
Take data from DTMF decoder; vehicle is run along the path of the arena i.e., the
Decode the data(); black line and the response of it is checked with
Start AGV(); variations in path, obstacles and environment. The
} sensor array is checked precisely by inspecting the
Start AGV() function of each and every sensor in it. For electronic
{ safety, the circuit was checked so the ICs do not
If(stop matches the current station) // comparing cause any problem while running the robot. The
the current input with the predefined stations wheel system was adjusted for the variations of load
{ that the vehicle has to carry. The motors are also
AGV halt() // stops AGV for 60 seconds for tested for their performance with current fluctuations.
loading or unloading the material Thus, the robot is proved as a configurable robot
} which is available in low budget and can be
Else dependable.
Run AGV() // the vehicle moves to the next
station if given or to the base station FUTURE WORK
}
The vehicle is been tested for the four wheel drive
VII. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP system with an appropriate steering mechanism, to
increase the load capacity of the robot. If the vehicle
An arena based on industrial setup is created on a has to be employed in sunlight, replacing the current
white sheet and obstacles are placed on it to check the IR sensorswith TSOP sensors on this system will
working of robot. The arena has one base station allow it to move even in sunlight. By integrating
where it is loaded and several delivery stations where Image processing technique with laser navigation or
the material is unloaded by the users as per their Sonars predefined path can be eliminated which
requirement. After completion of its delivery in all makes AGV completely autonomous.
the stations as per the formula the bot returns to its
base station. The vehicle has intelligence of taking The current AGV control system can be split into
the shortest route to the stations. Server-Client system where the server takes
responses and instructs the clients which are AGVs to
move along a Grid system.To further reduce the
manual work, a robotic arm or lifting mechanism can
be incorporated on AGV for loading or unloading the
material.

REFERENCES

[1] R. Siegwart and I. R. Nourbakhsh,“Introduction to

Autonomous Mobile Robots,” 2nd edition (MIT Press, 2004)

[2] Sowndar Paul. J, “An Intelligent AGV with Lane Detection

and Obstacle Avoidance Using ARM,” International Journal
of Engineering Sciences & Research Technology, 2014, pp.
671-677

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 International Journal of Advances in Electronics and Computer Science, ISSN: 2393-2835 Volume-2, Issue-5, May-2015
[3] K. Kishore Kumar, M. Siva Krishna, D. Ravitej, D. Bhavana, [5] Groover Mikell P, “Automation, Production Systems, and
“Design of Automatic Guided Vehicles,” International Computer - Integrated Manufacturing,” Third Edition, PHI
Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Technology (IJMET), publications,2008
Vol. 3,2012, pp. 24-32
[4] Kanis Fatima, Md. Abul Hossain, “Microcontroller [6] Rone Poumai,” Electronics projects,” Vol 24, EFY
ATmega32 Based Automatic Vehicle Control,” International enterprises Pvt. Ltd., pp. 173-174
Journal of Scientific& Engineering Research, Vol. 5,2014,
pp. 1-5

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