US What an AGV is
An AGV, short for automated guided vehicle, is a driverless vehicle that carries, tows or lifts materials along routes defined in advance. It follows guidance laid in the floor, fixed to walls or stored as a virtual path, and it repeats the same moves accurately, shift after shift.
AGVs have been used in industry since the 1950s, when the first models were towing tractors that followed a wire. Today they move pallets from the dock to storage, feed production lines, shuttle parts between cells and carry car bodies down assembly lines. In each case they take a repetitive, often physically demanding transport job off people and make the flow of materials predictable.
An AGV differs from an autonomous mobile robot mainly in how it navigates. Our AGV vs AMR comparison sets the two side by side.
How AGVs are guided
The guidance method sets how precise the vehicle is and how easily its routes can change.
| Guidance | How it works | Changing routes | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wire guidance | Antennas follow a signal from a wire cut into the floor | Hard: new floor cuts | Long-established factory routes |
| Magnetic tape | A sensor follows tape stuck to the floor | Easy: re-lay the tape | Light loads, simple loops |
| Laser and reflectors | A rotating laser measures angles to reflectors on walls and racking | Software change if reflectors are in view | Laser guided forklifts in warehouses |
| Floor codes and inertial | A camera reads codes on a floor grid, inertial sensors fill the gaps | Software change within the grid | Goods-to-person systems, compact storage |
| Natural features | LiDAR scans matched to the shape of the building | Software change | Modern AGVs and AMR-style vehicles |
All of these keep the vehicle on a planned path. That is what makes an AGV an AGV: even with natural navigation, it follows set virtual routes rather than planning a new one around each obstacle.
Types of AGV
AGVs are grouped by the job they do and the load they handle.
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Tow or tugger AGVs. Pull trains of trolleys or trailers along a route, often for line-side supply in automotive and electronics plants.
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Load carriers. Carry a single load such as a pallet, rack or container on their deck, sometimes with a roller or lift top to transfer it automatically.
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Forklift AGVs. Automated counterbalance or reach trucks that lift and stack pallets at height without a driver.
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Pallet jack AGVs. Move pallets at floor level between docks, staging lanes and production stations.
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Assembly line AGVs. Carry products through assembly stations, replacing fixed conveyors so the line layout can change.
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Heavy load AGVs. Move coils, moulds, aircraft parts and other loads of many tonnes in steel, paper and aerospace plants.
What makes up an AGV system
An AGV system is more than the vehicles. A typical installation has five parts working together.
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The vehicles. Each one has drive motors, batteries, the guidance sensor and an onboard controller, which talks to the motor drives and battery over CAN bus.
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Guidance. The wire, tape, reflectors, codes or map that define the routes.
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Safety devices. Safety-rated laser scanners, bumpers, warning lights and emergency stops that slow or stop the vehicle when something is in the way.
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Fleet management. Software that assigns jobs, manages traffic at junctions and links to the warehouse or manufacturing system.
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Charging. Battery swap stations or automatic chargers, often used for short opportunity charges between jobs.
Where AGVs are used
AGVs work best where the same loads move between the same points many times a day. Automotive plants use tuggers and assembly line AGVs to feed parts to the track. Food, drink and consumer goods sites use forklift and pallet AGVs to move finished pallets from the end of the line to the warehouse, often around the clock. Hospitals use small tugs to move meals, linen and waste along service corridors, and ports and steel mills use heavy-load vehicles for containers and coils. In each case the route rarely changes, which is exactly where fixed guidance is an advantage rather than a limit. Where layouts change weekly, an AMR is usually the better fit.
Adding AI perception to AGVs
A traditional AGV stops for anything in its scanner field, whether it is a person, a forklift or a stray box. Adding AI perception makes AGVs safer and more productive around people: cameras and an edge AI computer on the vehicle recognize what is ahead, so the vehicle can slow for a pedestrian, report a blocked aisle or check that a pallet is loaded correctly. Our smart factory case study covers pedestrian avoidance and route navigation on a material handling fleet.
Vehicle computers for AGVs need wide DC input from the traction battery, fanless cooling, shock and vibration resistance, and CAN and digital I/O for the vehicle controller. Our rugged Jetson computers cover AI perception on the vehicle, and our fanless industrial computers suit fleet control and line-side systems.
Quick answers on AGVs
AGVs: common questions
What does AGV stand for?
Automated guided vehicle. Some makers say automatic guided vehicle, and laser guided models are sometimes called LGVs.
What guides an AGV?
External guidance. A floor wire, magnetic tape, wall reflectors, floor codes or a stored map with virtual paths, depending on the system.
What is an AGV in manufacturing?
A driverless transport vehicle on the factory floor. It supplies lines with parts, moves work in progress between cells and takes finished goods to dispatch.
Is an AGV a robot?
Yes, in a broad sense. It is often called an AGV robot, but it follows set routes rather than planning its own, which is the main difference from an AMR.
How long do AGV batteries last?
It depends on the duty cycle. Many lithium-ion AGVs run around the clock by taking short opportunity charges between jobs instead of one long charge.
We supply rugged vehicle and fanless computers for AGV builders and integrators as standard, configured with the operating system, I/O and AI software they need and validated before the system ships.