Novartis, a pharmaceutical company, decides to expand its Torre Annunziata plant and constructs a new, highly modern building to house a new production area.

In addition to installing an AGV system, the company requires a software programming training for its operators and advanced training in the system’s use, enabling them to make small modifications themselves for future expansions.

User requirements are to transport pallets from warehouse to packaging lines and vice versa.

Missions are created by varying the digital signals present at each station. Communication with the host computer. Standard management of AGV traffic, mission priority, and intersections. A graphical display of the AGVs’ position in the layout has been developed.

AGV navigation type: inductive wire guidance, but for some reasong, the customer wanted to keep a tiled floor, so it has been challeging to keep AGV driving with a good precision on those tiles.

Traffic controller: 486 PC, in warm backup, with Digiboard multiserial ports, connected to all devices on the layout, DI/DO signals and infrared transreceivers to communicate with AGVs.

Charging concept: charging stations with contacts on top of the AGV, when batteries are low, the vehicle is sent there to stay and charge, as well the AGV goes on charger when there are no transports to execute.

This AGV system is working over two shifts.

Number of AGVs: 5

AGV manufacturer: Digitron

Function: AGV traffic controller development, order handling.

Year: 1995