Project Details
[Return to Previous Page]Automated Guided Vehicle
Company: PSU IME Service Systems Engineering 1
Major(s):
Primary: IE
Secondary: CMPSC
Optional: CMPEN, EE, ME
Non-Disclosure Agreement: NO
Intellectual Property: NO
Modern supply chains are becoming increasingly reliant on automation to meet challenges such as staffing shortages, increased customer demand, reduced lead times, and high network complexity. Long term, this project aims to create a fully automated, end-to-end supply chain and manufacturing system on a small, table-top scale. The scale is small to make the system low cost and safe for education and research, while still representing a complete end-to-end supply chain. The final system will consist of multiple robotic manufacturing facilities, autonomous transportation vehicles, automated distribution centers, and overarching cloud-based software. Multiple student project teams will each design, build, and integrate *one* link of this chain through the course of a semester. In this project, the team will produce a transportation vehicle. It should transport various cargo (unassembled Lego bricks, completed subassemblies, and a final assembly of multiple letters) via a simple road network; automatically receive cargo from a distribution center or manufacturing facility; use cloud software to receive a delivery destination, plan a route, and autonomously navigate while transmitting real time location, cargo manifest, and energy usage data; avoid obstacles and blockages while re-routing if necessary; automatically unload cargo to a manufacturing facility or end customer; include control and monitoring software written in Python to be run on a Raspberry Pi; and be setup in the FAME Lab in the Leonhard Building. A documentation package (e.g. schematics, CAD, source code) and a fully functional vehicle with line following, obstacle detection, waypoint detection, and basic cloud monitoring will be provided from a previous Capstone project. This semester, the team will pick up the work and fulfill the final vision of a fully automated supply chain by updating the current design and building a fleet of three (3) vehicles. This includes developing the hardware and software to enable automated loading and unloading of goods to be transported; building a representative road network with shipping lanes and hubs across the United States; maturing the software to do live obstacle avoidance and route planning; moderately re-designing the vehicle's body to make it more representative of realistic logistics vehicles; and completing cloud integration for control and monitoring.
