The Advancement of Automated Guided Vehicles

The field of Mechanical Engineering is all about making tasks easier for human beings to accomplish.  This can range from small devices like phones, to heavy equipment used for construction or moving large items.  Continuing off the latter example, heavy equipment has made many tasks, such as transporting huge pallets or digging large holes, much easier for humans to accomplish.  Things which would normally take a person hundreds of hours to do by hand can be accomplished in only a few hours when heavy equipment is utilized.  And now with future advancements human input may not even be required.

Automated Pallet Truck

As posted in an article on ASME.org, the development of Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV) is on the rise.  As the article points out, human beings are not perfect, and we result in a large amount of accidents or mistakes that happen in businesses.   Automated Guided Vehicles are the new attempt to solve this problem by taking humans out of the equation all together.  These vehicles can operate much more accurately and with fewer errors than a human operator.   This is an incredible advancement for large industries due to a number of reasons. 

The first and only AGV to be created so far is an automated pallet truck used to transport large pallets around factories and warehouses.  This robotic truck is initially priced at $85,000 which may seem like a large amount of money for just what this machine does, but its one time cost surely outweighs the cost of having a driver.  A driver has to be paid wages and benefits, they have to take breaks, and they can cause accidents and injuries.  Now these machines are certainly not perfect either, but they can operate at a much lower cost than humans. 

Just how beneficial can this new development really be?  The new pallet truck alone can save companies large amounts of money by operating 24/7 for up to 10 years.  They are also completely electric which results in zero emissions, but they can still tow up to 10,000 pounds.  But this is also just one type of heavy machine.  This first pallet truck is just an example of how automation is becoming the future.  As our technology continues to advance we may see more and more AGV devices in the future.  Construction sites could soon be filled with a great assortment of heavy machines that all run perfectly in sync to complete projects much faster and more efficiently than humans ever could. 

Another Automated Vehicle

Devices like AGVs show how our society is advancing to replace our remedial careers with automated systems.  This now allows for people to focus their efforts on more beneficial careers that can advance our society further.  The AGV technology is at the forefront of this advancement, and it can be used as an example for how to automate other processes.  With automated vehicles like these, there are still a number of new problems that will arise.  One of these new problems is the ethical complications that will arise with automated vehicles, but this topic will be addressed in the next post.  AGVs are a great advancement for not only the field of Mechanical Engineering, but also the world in general.