AGV MANUFACTURER REALISES VISION WITH SICK SAFETY SCANNER. "If I were you, I wouldn't start from here" is the punchline of a well-known joke about a hapless man asking for directions from a less-than-helpful passerby. It's a conundrum that frequently faces production teams with the ambition of automating their workflows to Industry 4.0-ready standards. All too often, fixed legacy infrastructure and buildings create a bewildering barrier to rethinking conventional linear production processes. However, the growing use of Automated Guided Vehicles and Carts offers the prospect of introducing more flexible materials handling, while dispensing with costly and non-value-added manual handling tasks. "Everyone is talking about AGVs at the moment," says Dan Evans, R&D manager at MasterMover. "Nearly everywhere we go, our customers ask us how we are developing our capability in this area." It's not surprising: MasterMover has a 20-year pedigree in designing and manufacturing safe and efficient electric tugs that take the effort and danger out of moving wheeled loads, around every kind of production and logistics environment. So, it is a company that most certainly is starting from the right place when it comes to designing AGVs. "All of our machines are built as pedestrian-operated tugs," Evans continues. "Our first AGV is no different - it's almost like an optional upgrade to a standard machine. So, if our customers want to change the AGV's route temporarily, maybe just for a couple of days, while they do some building work, for example, they don't need us to come in, or learn how to programme the AGVs themselves, they can just reallocate some resource and pull down the tiller for a few days. Then, go back to AGV mode when it's all sorted."
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