Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Conference on Industrial Engineering Theory, Applications and Practice Cancun, Mexico November

4-7, 2007

INTEGRATED PLC CONTROL WITH WIRELESS CAMERA OF AGV SYSTEM

S. Butdee1, P. Duangmas1, A. Panchai1, and A. Suebsomran2 Integrated Manufacturing System Research Center (IMSRC) Department of Production Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
2 1

Department of Teacher Training in Mechanical Engineering Faculty of Technical Education

King Mongkuts Institute of Technology North Bangkok (KMITNB) 1518 Piboonsongkram Rd. Bangsue Bangkok, 10800, Thailand Corresponding authors e-mail: asr@kmitnb.ac.th Abstract: The AGV vehicle is first developed in 2005 at King Mongkuts Institute of Technology North Bangkok. The vehicle was controlled by an inboard PLC control. The design of the vehicle consists of 3 wheels. The front wheel is used for steering and driving, whereas the 2 rear wheels are free and equipped with 2 encoders. The controlled strategy is based on two main purposes: the path is stored in the PLC memory and the vehicle displacement is calculated by the wheel rotational measurement. The comparison between the required path and the actual position of the AGV allow calculating deviation error. Function of error, a correction of strategy of driving of driving speed and steering angle, is applied in order to get a smooth and precise displacement. However, the past developed vehicle is lack of remote control. This paper presents the integrated PLC inboard control with wireless camera. The integrated control scheme can apply to controlling the vehicle from the control room or remote areas. The distance of camera control 50-100 meters. This control can improve more efficient of the AGV vehicle system.

1.

INTRODUCTION

Automatic Guided Vehicle (AGV) has firstly developed and conducted the research as shown by (Suthep, 2006-2007) in the attempt of applying to Jumbo Truck Manufacturing in Thailand. On the past of developed AGV, we surveyed paper concerned the design and control aspects as following. (Tomita, 1994) studied with preview lateral control of an automated vehicle, with a machine vision system. The lateral control is found with road edges captured by the machine vision so as to drive a vehicle along a road. The road edges are expressed in the machine vision system as two series of sampled points, and the optimal path is designed with the series of the sampled points, which enabled the vehicle to drive safely and comfortably. Experiments with an automated guided vehicle (AGV) were conducted. Where the control period is about 0.5sec and the vehicle drives at O.3 m/sec. The results showed the feasibility of the algorithm. (Seelinger, 2005) presented a vision-guided control method called mobile camera-space manipulation (MCSM) that enabled a robotic forklift vehicle to engage pallets based on a pallets actual current location by using feedback from vision sensors that are part of the robotic forklift. MCSM is capable of high precision mobile manipulation control without relying on strict camera calibration. The paper contained development of the method as well as experimental results with a forklift prototype in actual pallet engagement tasks. The technology could be added to AGV (automatically guided vehicle) systems enabling them to engage arbitrarily located pallets. It also could be added to standard forklifts as an operator assist capability. (Kay, 1993) showed the method termed global vision, is described that provided the information necessary for the control of free-ranging automatic guided vehicle (AGV) systems. Global vision refered to the use of cameras placed at faced locations in a workspace to extend the local sensing available on board each AGV. The characteristics of an overall global vision-based control system are first discussed. A camera placement algorithm is then described that determined the number of cameras required and their placement in a facility, and finally, an implementation of the image processing and Kalman filtering necessary to track mobile objects is presented. (Fukuda, 1996) reported a template matching which is a popular method for visual recognition. It cost much time to detect the target object. They applied Fuzzy and Neural Network algorithm to solve this problem. However, the problem to mistake recognizing the target object is not solved. Hence, in this paper, they proposed robust visual recognition algorithm for the autonomous robot navigation. The proposing algorithm employed a fuzzy template matching with the target object as well as the similar objects in the environment. As a result, the robot verified the tentative recognition by comparing the likelihood of plus elements (target objects) with that of minus elements (similar objects). To integrate this algorithm into the robot navigation system, they proposed hierarchical control architecture. The validity of the proposing navigation system is shown with experimental results. (Hayakawa, 2004) presented a ISBN: 978-0-9654506-3-8 774

Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Conference on Industrial Engineering Theory, Applications and Practice Cancun, Mexico November 4-7, 2007

method of realizing driver-compatible steering systems in ITS, for vehicles that have capabilities of carrying out path following tasks. The method aimed to maintain steering smoothness from high to low vehicle speed, including nonhighway environments, which may be involved tighter turns. Multiple look-ahead points are introduced, which allowed guiding the vehicle with minimum steering corrections, while maintaining the tracking accuracy. The lookahead points, one for recognizing the path deviation for the error-cancel feedback control and the other for predicting the necessary steering for feedforward control, are varied independently according to vehicle speed. This appropriately distributed the controls and determined the final output of the steering system. The look-ahead distance for feedforward is extended longer than the look-ahead distance for feedback at low velocities, and is shortened according to velocity increase. The look-ahead distance for the feedback acted the opposite. The steering control system was implemented onto an experimental vehicle and tests were conducted. The results of path following experiments showed that the method is capable of realizing smooth steering control when tracking paths involving various turns, in a wide speed range, while maintaining tracking accuracy. In this paper we present an approach of an AGVs development and control structure. It is organized as follows. The system architecture and communication system are explained. Next section deals with control system designed in this study. Furthermore integrated wireless camera equipped to AGV. The simulation study and experiments of AGV implementation are described, and the conclusion is given in final part.

2. 2.1 Developed AGV Prototype

SYSTEM ARCHITECURE DESCRIPTION

Figure 1. Photo of the AGV Prototype

front

AGV Prototype Dimensions: R = 1.5 m. T = 0.55 m. W = 0.73 m

W
Control point

R T

rear

Figure 2. AGV Prototype Dimensions The AGV prototype design is based on existing JUMBO industrial truck as shown Figure 1. It is a three wheels vehicle as shown in Figure 2. The front wheel is used for driving and steering the AGV and the two rear wheels are free. The steering and driving are DC motor. Two encoders are individually attached on the two rear wheels in 775

Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Conference on Industrial Engineering Theory, Applications and Practice Cancun, Mexico November 4-7, 2007

order to measure the vehicle displacement and then calculate its real time position and orientation. The choice of positioning the encoders on the free wheels provides to the vehicle an accurate measurement of its progression. A programmable logic control (PLC) is used for motion control. The parameters of the motion are driving speed and steering angle which determine the evolution of the position and orientation of the AGV. The input and output signal are interfaced with PLC module. The inputs are the encoder signal from left and right rear wheels. The driving speed and steering angle are calculated form these inputs and the digital output is converted to analog signal to drive amplifier of the driving motor and steering motor on front wheel as shown in Figure 3. Figure 4 shown communication system. Modbus protocol is selected for communication structure between PC in operator site and PLC on AGV remote site of operation. Mater-slave parameters are obtained the configuration of communication protocol on PC in remote operation through RS-232 standard port. Mater will send command query to slave and the salve will answer back to the master then the communication will takes place.

PLC
Analog output Analog output HS counter HS counter

Driving motor DC Motor + amplifier

Analog control

Steering motor DC Motor + amplifier

left rear wheel encoder right rear wheel encoder

Figure 3. AGV Prototype Command Architecture 3.

Figure 4. AGV Wireless Communication

CONTROL DESIGN SYSTEM

The deviation error being evaluated, the steering and driving command signal can be calculated and converted to analog signal by the PLC. The steering and driving control strategy are showed by the to simple block diagram figure 5. The correction applied to the command signal is a proportional one for the driving signal and proportional derivative for the steering signal.
Vehicle speed Path + d Correction PLC + Us Motor and transmission s

L(,v)

Vehicle position

Measured by the 2 rear encoders Measured by the 2 rear encoders

Speed demand

PLC + Correction Ud Motor and transmission

Vehicle speed

Measured by the 2 rear encoders

Figure 5. Block Diagram of Steering and Driving Control The control algorithm of the AGV has been implemented by using PLC TSX micro form SCHNEIDER. The implemented program is written by PL7 Pro using Grafcet and structured text language. The main inputs of the PLC are high speed up and down counter connected to the 2 encoders. The outputs of steering and driving command are 776

Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Conference on Industrial Engineering Theory, Applications and Practice Cancun, Mexico November 4-7, 2007

converted to analog output ranged by 0-5 V. The grafcet loop executes 3 consecutive tasks. Control loop is executed every 5 ms.

4.

INTERGRATED VISION SYSTEM

Two modes of operation are developed with AGV control function: automatic and manual modes of operation. In this section, we describe the manual control operation with wireless camera equipped in front of AGV by fixed-point position in pose of look-ahead structure of visual control structure as illustrated in Figure 6 a). AV-receiver module uses for send and receive the audio video signal transmitted in radio frequency range with maximum distance 100 meters as illustrated in Figure 6 b). Human can view the environment and control AGV during its movement in manual mode of operation.

Figure 6. Integrated Camera to AGV: a). Wireless Camera Installation, and b). AV-receiver Module in Remote Site of Operation

5.

SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTS

5.1 MATLAB Simulation In control design system, DC motors are applied for driving system. There are two axes of AGV control system. One is for driving axis and the other is for steering axis. Positioning control of AGV is needed for control displacement and steering angle according to path of generation command. In this work, we design the control structure with Mathlab by using PD controller as depicted in Figure 7, since control gains are obtained as Kp equals to 27.5 and Kd is equals to 5.5 with response time 1.8 second with no steady-state error as shown control the performance in Figure 8.

Figure 7. Control Block Simulation by Matlab/Simulink Toolbox 5.2 Experiment Results 777

Figure 8. Simulation Results of Control Design

Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Conference on Industrial Engineering Theory, Applications and Practice Cancun, Mexico November 4-7, 2007

Command window illustrated in Figure 9 uses for control AGV movement operation through PC in long distance area. There are two types of command such as positioning command (x,y position) and jog mode command which is tested motion control in each axis such as go, turn left, turn right etc. In positioning command, set of x,y coordinated position are sent to AGV with the design path of movement. Experiments are conducted in several tests, for example, Figure 10 is shown the design path with S-curve shape of AGV moving on PC. The position pairs are sent to AGV with wireless communication channel. AGV receives the command of two axes, steering and driving axes, to control AGV with regarding to specified path. The result of AGV moving with the specified path have is shown in Figure 11.

a.
Figure 9. AGV Command Window

b.

Figure 10. Scurve Path of Command Motion from Window

Figure 11. Result of AGV Motion with Scurve Path

6.

CONCLUSTION

This article presents a control of AGV by integrated wireless camera. Overall structure for designing AGV is described. Control of AGV motion is implemented by using PD control scheme. Driving axis and steering axis are separated to implement the motion control. In this research, we equipped wireless camera for controlling AGV in remote area. Position and orientation movements are estimated and control by human eyes for manual mode. Position and orientation of AGV are measured the motion control system. Simulation by using Matlab/Simulink software is used for verifying the design control parameters of AGV. Result of experiment is tested for example with specified design Scurve shape of AGV movement. We conclude that the vehicle can reach from the stating position to the target position with accurate location and can control AGV with fast scanned environment by using wireless camera for investigation and the freedom of operation. Future work is planed to increase the automatic agent by extracting the observation technique by image processing unit. Treatment of dynamic model of vehicle is also planed to the next step.

7.

ACKNOWLAGEMENTS 778

Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Conference on Industrial Engineering Theory, Applications and Practice Cancun, Mexico November 4-7, 2007

The authors would like to thank the Schneider electric for Automation solution and JUMBO, industrial trucks manufacturer, to support the AGV prototype construction.

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REFERENCES

Butdee, S., and Suebsomran, A. (2007). Localization Based on Matching Location of AGV, Proceeding of the 24th International Manufacturing Conference, IMC24, Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland, pp. 1121-1128. Butdee, S., and Suebsomran, A. (2006). Learning and Recognition Algorithm of Intelligent AGV System, GCMM2006, Santos, Brazil, pp.13-72. Butdee, S., Vignat F., and Suebsomran, A. (2006). Self - alignment Control of an Automated Unguided Vehicle, IDMME06, Grenoble, France. Tomita, K., and Tsugawa, S. (1994). Visual Navigation of a Vehicle Along Roads: The Algorithm and Experiments, IEEE 1994 Vehicle & Navigation Information Systems Conference Proceedings, pp. 419-424. Seelinger, M, and Yoder, J-D. (2005). Automatic Pallet Engagement by a Vision Guided Forklift, Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation , Barcelona, Spain, pp. 4068-4073. Kay G. M., and Lud R. C., (1993). Global Vision for the Control of Free-Ranging AGV Systems, Proceedings of the 1993 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Atlanta, Georgia, Volume 2 , pp. 14-19. Fukuda T., Yokoyama Y., Abe Y., and Tanaka K. (1996). Navigation System Based on Ceiling Landmark Recognition for Autonomous Mobile Robot- Position / Orientation Control by Landmark Recognition with Plus and Minus Primitives-, Proceedings of the 1996 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation , Minneapolis, Minnesota, pp. 1720-1725. Hayakawa Y., White R., Kimura T., and Naito G. (2004). Driver-Compatible Steering System for Wide SpeedRange Path Following, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, 9,: 544-552.

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