A Moving Control of an Automatic Guided Vehicle Based on the Recognition of Double Landmarks

In this paper the problem of a moving control of an automatic guided vehicle(AGV) which transports a dead body to a designated cinerator safely in a crematorium, an special indoor environment, will be discussed. Since a method of burying guided lines in the floor is not proper to such an environment, a method of moving control of an AGV based on infrared ray sensors is now proposed. With this approach, the AGV emits infrared ray to the landmarks adheres to the ceiling to find a moving direction and then moves that direction by recognizing them. One of the typical problems for this method is that dead zone and/or overlapping zone may exist when the landmarks are deployed. To resolve this problem, an algorithm of recognizing double landmarks at each time is applied to minimize occurrences of sensing error. In addition, at the turning area to entering the designated cinerator, to fit an AGV with the entrance of the designated cinerator, an algorithm of controlling the velocity of both the inner and outer wheel of it. The functional correctness of our proposed algorithm has been verified by using a prototype vehicle. Our real AGV system has been applied to a crematorium and it moves automatically within an allowable range of location error.