Research on RTLS-Based Coordinate Guided Vehicle (CGV) for Material Distribution in Discrete Manufacturing Workshop

Material distribution in discrete manufacturing workshop suffers from a bottleneck of capturing and collecting real-time field information. Without up-to-date information, the staff will be difficult to make accurate decisions. It seems that Real-time locating system (RTLS) is a good solution in the modern manufacturing. Based on the RTLS platform, this paper raises the concept CGV (Coordinate Guided Vehicle) for material distributing. The framework of CGV-based material distribution scheme is presented for guiding the implementation of affordable system. Meanwhile, the RTLS and WEM (Workshop Electronic Map) are briefly described as the basic technology for CGV realization. According to the rule of the shortest transport distance (STD), we put forward the path planning algorithm for the distribution route design of CGV, which consists of global path planning algorithm and local multi-sensors fusion algorithm. Considering demonstrating purpose, we develop a simplified 8-workstation prototype system capturing the main characteristics of the real discrete manufacturing workshop. Our results indicate that the CGV-based material distribution system provides the opportunity for new levels of process visibility and efficiency when comparing to conventional AGV-distributing systems.