Two laser guided vehicles, Forklift style AGV's recently rolled onto the floor at a major Australian manufacturer of packaged food products. The AGV System represents a major building block in an integrated push toward extensive automation for the manufacturer. The AGV's, capable of transporting one or two pallets at a time, feature a Supervisory Control System, NT8000 operating software is PC based and operates on the Windows® XP platform, managing all traffic control and order management for the system.

Pallets travel from automatic robotic palletizing stations to multiple conveyor lines.

As a pallet become available for transport an AGV picks up the pallet and then delivers the load to the stretch wrapper in feed conveyor, at the completion of the stretch wrapper another AGV picks up this pallet and delivers it to the warehouse, The pallets are deposited into deep stacking lines where they are also double stacked using special fork sensor for precision drop off in the warehouse, where they are retrieved by manual fork drivers and taken and placed onto trucks.

The AGV System also features automatic battery charging, as well as SICK laser bumpers. Laser bumpers emit pulses of infrared light in an adaptable, predefined field in front of the vehicle, providing an image of any obstruction along the travel path. The AGV will slow down, or stop until the obstruction has passed