Computer aided engineering of automated guided vehicle systems

Automated Guided Vehicle Systems (AGVS) are becoming more and more the main material handling devices in flexible manufacturing systems. The design of an AGVS network is a complex, iterative process. It requires a sequence of geometrical layout drawings and an analytical and computational evaluations. The ability to analyze the AGVS design directly and interactively from the layout drawing would substantially increase the productivity of the design engineer.

A Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) design tool must provide the following three capabilities. First, it must allow the easy, interactive and graphical definition of the system by providing standard drawing symbols and the required operations on those symbols. Second, it must support direct, interactive analysis of the design from within the drafting package. Third, it must provide for the necessary output to interface with off line simulation, analysis and verification programs.

The possibility of extending the prominent CAD packages CADAM and AutoCad to perform CAE of AGVS is examined. A prototype of such a CAE tool has been developed based upon the Autocad package and implemented on a microcomputer. Design and implementation issues, as well as future research areas, will be reported on.