Laser guided AGV

I'm working on a bachelor's project, together with 5 other students, where we're going to continue development of and improve a laser guided AGV.

The AGV in picture and movies is the one produced by a group last year and we're keeping most of it. The major change we're planning is to remove the loading area on top and instead have it fetch a trailer of some sort. Minor changes include adding turn sensors on drive wheels to get better movement feedback - one of the problems with the old one is unreliable position data from the NAV200 but it will hopefully improve if we feed it somewhat accurate velocity data. We might also stick some ultrasonic sensors for collision avoidance on it. Otherwise the main problem is to rewrite the control software to make it a lot faster and more reliable. Hopefully we'll also be able to find out why the bluetooth connection to the central computer drops every now and then.

010218 update
Been a little busy at university so no time for updates. We're completely rewriting the software, both AGV firmware and the controlling / route planning PC software. So far the bluetooth and motors are working, so we have a pretty fast computer controlled RC tank :) We're installing the homemade tachometers so we can create a control loop for the propulsion.

And we've also changed the plans of how you will work with the AGV. Now you'll mark disallowed areas on the map and the AGV will find the shortest route to the goal automatically, instead of you having to place navigation nodes and draw edges/lanes.

Today we're (re)starting the work of integrating the NAV200 with the rest of the system.