Autonomous, self-propelled, trackless work-carrier trucks capable of being coupled

摘要

At present, positively guided work-carrier plates on a rigid circulating belt system for interlinking the material flow between machining stations and driverless industrial trucks are used for the transport of materials in production plants. The tasks of the currently used work-carrier plates and driverless transport systems can be performed by the autonomous, self-propelled (driverless), intelligent, trackless and self-orienting work-carrier trucks capable of being coupled which are proposed here. These work-carrier trucks have a separate power supply, a steered and driven chassis for propulsion, sensors for measuring the surroundings, an on-board computer for determining the position by means of the measured values from the sensors and require only a level surface as roadway. In addition, the work-carrier trucks are equipped with a coupling mechanism on the side faces. With this coupling mechanism, they can be coupled together to form a flat- spread combination of work-carrier trucks. It is thus possible to dimension the work-carrier trucks according to the carrying load or to dimension them on the basis of the requisite size of the loading area. The properties of the individual work-carrier trucks also apply to the combination, so that the combination also has the properties of being autonomous, self-propelled (driverless), intelligent, trackless, capable of being coupled and self-orienting. IMAGE