More self-guided AGVs at automotive plants are also in evidence across the Atlantic. For example, Pennsylvania-based materials handling equipment supplier Seegrid has supplied the manufacturing industry across the US with vision guided vehicles (VGVs) for more than a decade. According to vice-president of products and services Jeff Christensen, the Seegrid VGV–itself the result of decades of research by Dr Hans Moravec, a world-renowned robotics expert at Carnegie Mellon University–takes standard industrial equipment and kits it out with proprietary machine vision technology.
"With five pairs of stereo cameras on each vehicle and the ten cameras working in sets of two, like human eyes, our VGVs 'see' their environment with precision," says Christensen.