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Industry 4.0 –AGVs and the future of manufacturing

2023-07-14

What is the route ahead for manufacturing? It is easy to say that it lies in the automated guided vehicle (AGV), and think that the problem is solved. That will not work. According to Prof. Anna Syberfeldt, today`s AGVs are too expensive even in the simplest applications. And too dumb for more complicated tasks.

Anna is Professor of Production Engineering in the School of Engineering Science at the University of Skövde in Sweden. She leads the Production & Automation Engineering research group, comprising over 40 researchers in virtual engineering. The group`s research covers areas such as simulation, optimization, robotics, decision-support systems, and AR/VR, and is carried out and applied largely in cooperation with partners in manufacturing industry.

We need to start again with AGVs

[Even the most basic of today`s AGVs is too expensive," she says. [There is too much reluctance to move away from old platforms, and too little incentive to reduce prices. We need to start again, from the ground up."

The hoped-for future for AGVs is that they are much more flexible. They are smaller, and able to work together in swarms. Tiny batch sizes are economical. Mass production and the conveyor belt disappear. The barriers between internal and external transportation break down.

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