Arranging goods in factory or in hypermarket; delivering medication and meal in hospital; carrying weapons or facilities for soldiers in battle-field, UGV gradually replace human labor under heavy lifting working condition; strengthen the safety and at the same time reinforce the efficiency. Nowadays, factory and warehouse is the principal place where we can see UGV truly and commonly be used, the interaction platform including front-access shelving, drive-in shelving, cantilever, and automatic warehouse.
Industry 4.0, a gradually-matured concept in manufacturing technologies, shows the enhancing performance in management and production; with the participation of UGV, the effectiveness is belief to be upgraded into a new level.
Operating in warehouse and factory, dozens even hundreds of UGVs compose into a complete fleet management. To maintain the fluency of the operation flow, the installation of high performance computer for UGV is required. StackRack's SR series are designed with Intel 4th Haswell Core i7 CPU, possessing the capability to afford and well-perform under multiple data input and output. The automatic operation of UGV depends on several systems: Positioning & Guidance, Motor control, Computer networks, and Battery charging.
- Positioning & Guidance
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To recognize the environmental situation and position, UGV requires several important "eyes", including lidar, camera, and sensor. Lidar, function in 3D mapping and programming, measuring distance by illuminating targets with laser light, scans the surrounding environment to depict images in real time 360° horizontal view and 30° vertical view. While camera and sensor located rear and front, detecting obstacles and planned path marked with magnetic pucks, tapes or wire, guarantee the advancing safety. Our SR10B solution provides 4 x RJ45 Ethernet port and 2 x mPCIe expansion slot, allowing multiple connections for detecting equipment; moreover, provided with DDR3 1600 XR-DIMM up to 8 GB and 2 x mSATA up to 256GB, SR10B contains massive storage for map information and data.
- Motor control
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After receiving and analyzing information of relative position between vehicles and environment, the computer issues commands toward the action of UGV including going forward or backward, pausing, sidestepping, and lifting.
- Computer networks
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The factory network analyzes inputs and outputs from various stations and relay the information to UGV controller. Controller decides certain tasks performed by each UGV, instructing individual vehicle. Each AGV is equipped with a computer which receive wireless signal from UGV controller; SR10B provided with 2 x mPCIe expansion slots for possible requirement of SIM card socket, maintaining the connection between UGV and control center.
- Battery charging
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UGV possess a large battery inside. Once the UGV controller detects the battery is lower than certain voltage, it will send UGV to a battery charging station, which can be installed in the floor anywhere such as buffer stages, turn-around points and stops.
With multi-connection, high and stable function, extreme wide temp and wide voltage characteristic, StackRack's solutions provide remarkable support for UGV, especially under intense working condition where continuously high efficient performance is required.