The Localization And Navigation Of Automated Guided Vehicle In Warehouse Environment

Automated Guided Vehicle(AGV)plays an increasingly important role in automated logistics system.Localization is the prerequisite of AGV to complete given tasks automatically in warehouse environment.The reliability and accuracy of localization system is of the vitally importance for the AGV in warehouse since it strongly determines its efficiency and security.However,the characteristics of warehouse environment make it difficult to realize the localization of AGV.In this paper,we design a localization system,artificial landmarks are placed in the beams of shelves to achieve high-precision localization of AGV.In this paper,we propose a method of landmarks placement,the problem of landmarks placement is transformed into an optimization problem.Indistinguishable artificial landmarks are placed in the beams of shelves,just using a single landmark cannot realize the localization of AGV,so the basic unit of localization is defined,the aim of landmarks placement is to ensure the feature of the basic unit of localization is unique in the environment.Then the difference degree of the basic unit of localization is defined.The greater the difference degree,the stronger the reliability of map matching.Optimization objective function which aims at maximizing the difference degree and constraints are designed.Genetic Algorithm is used to solve the optimization problem.The laser scan data is processed by median filtering,cluster analysis,corner detection and line extraction.We recognize the landmarks according to the geometric feature of landmarks and recognize the basic unit of localization from the recognized landmarks,the observed basic unit of localization is matched with the already known ones stored in the map.Once the map was successful matched,can we calculate the position of AGV.We realize the path following of AGV,which can follow the expected path precisely.Finally,experiments in a real warehouse environment indicate that the localization system is high-precision and AGV can follow the expected path precisely.The main contributions of this paper are as follows:1.According to the characteristics of warehouse environment,we design a landmark-based localization system for AGV.2.We propose a method of landmarks placement,we transform the problem of landmarks placement into an optimization problem,Genetic Algorithm is used to solve the optimization problem.3.We process the laser scan data to recognize the landmarks.