Designing Embedded Systems with PIC Microcontrollers, 2nd Edition

APPENDIX 4. Some basics of Autonomous Guided Vehicles

This appendix covers certain introductory aspects of Autonomous Guided Vehicle design, important for developing the Derbot project.

Locomotion and wheel layout

It is interesting to take note of wheeled vehicles around us before speculating on the optimum arrangement for a small AGV. We note, of course, in passing that wheels are not our only option for locomotion – there are tracked and walking vehicles of different sorts, but these are either too complex or inefficient for our purposes. The most common wheel layout is certainly the motor car, generally with two fixed driven wheels at the back and two steerable wheels at the front. This gives very high stability, attractive for a vehicle ...