Agent-oriented Embedded Control System Design and Development of a Vision-based Automated Guided Vehicle

This paper presents a control system design and development approach for a vision-based automated guided vehicle (AGV) based on the multi-agent system (MAS) methodology and embedded system resources. A three-phase agent-oriented design methodology Prometheus is used to analyse system functions, construct operation scenarios, define agent types and design the MAS coordination mechanism. The control system is then developed in an embedded implementation containing a digital signal processor (DSP) and an advanced RISC machine (ARM) by using the multitasking processing capacity of multiple microprocessors and system services of a real-time operating system (RTOS). As a paradigm, an onboard embedded controller is designed and developed for the AGV with a camera detecting guiding landmarks, and the entire procedure has a high efficiency and a clear hierarchy. A vision guidance experiment for our AGV is carried out in a space-limited laboratory environment to verify the perception capacity and the onboard intelligence of the agent-oriented embedded control system.

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