An automated material handling system improves the accuracy and efficiency of transportation, storage, and retrieval of materials. Benefits of this system include product damage and reduced labour cost [1-3]. A material handling system can be simply defined as an integrated system involving activities such as handling and controlling materials. Materials include all kinds of raw materials, work-in-progress, subassemblies, and finished assemblies.

The main motto of an effective material handling system is to ensure that the material in the right amount is safely delivered to the desired destination at the right time and with minimum cost and it is an integral part of any manufacturing activity. The role of AGVs and robots has become strategic to the modern material handling practices followed in the present-day industry. Automated guided vehicles (AGVs), commonly known as driverless vehicles are turning out to be an important part of the automated manufacturing system. With the shift from mass production to mid-volume and mid-variety, all flexible manufacturing systems use AGVs [4-7].

Now a day's industries require not only machine flexibility but also material handling, storage, and retrieval flexibilities. Hence the importance of an AGV has grown manifold. AGVs are battery-powered driverless vehicles with programming capabilities for the destination, path selection, and positioning. AGVs belong to a class of highly flexible, intelligent, and versatile material handling systems used to transport material from various loading locations to various unloading locations throughout the facility. The capability related to collision avoidance is nicely inbuilt into AGVs [9-11]. Therefore, the vehicle comes to a dead stop before any damage is done to personnel, material, or structure. Nowadays, AGVs are versatile and possess flexible material handling systems.

There are modem Microprocessors and Microcontroller technologies to guide a vehicle along a prescribed path and correct if the vehicle strays from the path. An AGV system controller receives instructions directly from the host computer connected through a wire in-floor or by wireless radio signals to guide the vehicle. To design and fabricate an Automated Guided Vehicle for material handling and transportation of materials within a particular working area by using Arduino, RFID tags, and controllers. The scope of the project is to digitalize and automate transportation techniques in small-scale industries and laboratories.

This section explains the materials and methods which are used for designing the components of material-handling automated guided vehicles. The automated guided vehicle is composed of two 12v 12AH batteries, two 24V 350W brushless hub motors with a controller, 2.5-inch caster wheels, fasteners, motor driver and tags, sensors and modules, Arduino board, Wi-Fi module, Node MCU, RFID tags and mild steel frame.

Materials

The materials used in this setup are the frame of the AGV is made up of mild steel and an Aluminium checkered plate set up to hold a strong base to hold the interior components inside the AGV. Mild steel is readily available in the market, economical to use, has good mechanical properties, is easily machinable, and has a moderate factor of safety, high tensile strength, and low coefficient of thermal expansion. Cold forming allows square tubing to have a higher yield and tensile strength than the steel from which it is made. This makes the material able to withstand high pressures, temperatures, and destructive elements.

Conceptual Design

The design of this AGV is reduced and optimized to be as simple as possible without compromising its high efficiency and work output. The design makes the working of AGV easier and the placement of components in a sufficient way to achieve material handling with programmed output.

Figure 1:  Isometric View.

Figure 2: Top View.

Completed Unit

The completed unit is shown in the below figure.

Figure 3: Completed unit.

Assembled 2D Drawing

Figure 5: Exploded view.

Data Collected From Tests

The followings are the data and calculations collected from the tests and the results obtained.

Battery Calculation

Table 1: Calculation.

Speed Calculation

Table 2: Speed calculation.

Design Validation

The CAD model from the conceptual design of material handling AGV was subjected to stress, strain, and displacement to determine the withstanding capability of the vehicle which was carried out by finite elements using the tool solid works simulator. The load applied is 490 N (50 kg).

Motor Calculation: The consumed electrical power of the motor is defined by the formula:

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