DESIGN & IMPLEMENTATION OF AN AUTONOMOUS FORKLIFT SHANEESH ARJOO BEng (HONS) MECHATRONICS FACULTY OF ENGINEERING,UNIVERSITY OF MAURITIUS THE CHALLENGE Autonomous guided vehicles have become one of the key components of automation and during the past ten years there have been major developments in this field. But unfortunately AGVs developed are only capable of specific tasks and work in restricted human free zones. So the real challenge for this project was to design and implement an overall system consisting of a central PC and an autonomous forklift that can sort out crates and also load the latter into trailers according to a specific loading pattern. The forklift should also be capable of operating safely in an existing human work place where other vehicles and workers on foot are present. AIMS To meet the challenge set by the project the following aims should be met : Sorting of loads for delivery in specific trailer. RF communication between central PC and forklift. Ability of autonomous forklift to navigate through a predefined path. Obstacle avoidance along path, through use of non-contact sensor for increased security. Loading of standard trailers in a specific pattern. FUTHER WORKS Design and implementation of a charging area at the parking zone so that the AGVs can recharge their batteries without human intervention. Use of wireless camera instead of LDRs for line following purposes. Construction of more similar AGVs so that they can share the work load. Substitution of track and wheels system by Omni directional wheels even if they are a lot more expensive. Design of a graphical user interface for the operator to control the sorting process more efficiently. CONCLUSION The aims set by the project were successfully met by the design and implementation of two sub-systems consisting of a central PC and an autonomous forklift. The system is capable of sorting and loading loads into specific trailers by observing a loa ding pattern. Safety features included in the AGV permits the latter to securely operate in an human environment. OBSTACLE AVOIDANCEThe AGV would use its ultrasound sensor to detect obstacles whilst moving along the path. Any obstacle found within 25cm of the forklift would cause the latter to stop and any prolonged obstruction would be signaled to the PC via RF. DECODINGThe PC would sort out the different loads based on barco des by the use of the machine vision software Roborealm. The decoded information is then passed on to the Arduino which would display it and transmit it to the AGV. So that the latter knows in which trailer to perform the loading operation. SPECIFIC TRAILER LOADING PA TTERNTo be able to deliver the loads in a specific pattern the forklift would use its ultrasound sensor to accurately measure distance. The latter would continue to move forward until the required distance is not reached. Required distance = width of pallet + minimum clearance between pallets / pallet and trailer wall PATH The figure above shows the predefined path up on which the AGV would navigate. HARDWARE
