JPS60243709A - Unmanned carrier car system - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To improve the positioning accuracy to stop an unmanned carrier car by arranging a metal detector for detecting a metallic label formed in a travelling course and setting up slow travelling state or the like in accordance with the detected result. CONSTITUTION:Receiving coils 11, 12 having the same constitution are fitted to the front and back of the bottom of the carrier car 4 and the metal detector 15 is arranged on a prescribed position between the coils 11, 12. The detecting coils 11, 12 detect the position of a high frequency transmitter 19 and supplies their detected outputs to respective receiving circuits 13, 14 and the metal detector 15 detects a metal member 20 arranged immediately below the travelling course and supplied the detected output to a decision circuit 16. The decision circuit 16 is constituted of a flip-flop 17 to be sent up by the output of the receiving circuit 13 and reset by the output of the metal detector 15 and an AND gate 18. Consequently, the output of said FF17 becomes a decelerating command and the output of the AND gate 18 becomes a stop command to control the travelling of the carrier car 4.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION (Field of Industrial Application) The present invention relates to an automatic guided vehicle system used in a factory or the like.

(Prior art and its problems) References for automatic guided vehicle systems include, for example, "Tobacco Japan/Monthly International Special Issue, April 15, 1980, "Development Report on Introduction to North Kanto Factory,"P83."

Conventionally, in this type of automated guided vehicle system, in order to improve positioning accuracy when stopped, a transmitter (in this example, a DC-excited electromagnet) 1 is buried at the stopping point, as shown in FIG. On the other hand, 1, in a certain section before that,
Separately from the guide wire 1) 2 for the travel guide, a guide wire 3 for instructing low-speed travel is buried, and on the conveyor vehicle 4 side, the low frequency alternating magnetic field emitted from the guide 11II3 is detected via the coil 5.
This causes the vehicle to travel at a low speed, and then, in response to the receiver (reed switch in this example) 6 receiving a signal from the transmitter 1, a configuration has been adopted in which the vehicle is stopped.

However, according to such a configuration, in addition to the guide wire 2 for guiding the travel, it is necessary to bury the guide wire 3 for instructing low-speed travel in the road surface of the travel route, which takes time and effort to construct. In the remote control panel, transmitter 1. Since both of the guide wires 3 must be switched, there are problems such as an increase in the number of signal wires, leading to an increase in cost.

Therefore, the present applicant previously proposed in Utility Application No. 58-81774 that a transmitter (in this example, a coil energized with high frequency) 7 buried at the stop point as shown in FIGS. 4 and 5. The front receiver 8 of the transport vehicle 4 receives the signal from the carrier 4, sets the flip-flop 9, and outputs the Q output II
IT is used as a deceleration command to shift to a low speed running state, and in response to the signal from the transmitter 7 being received by the rear receiver 10, the flip-flop 9 is reset to cancel the deceleration command, and the rear receiver 10 Reception output n 1 of the device 10
We have proposed (unpublished) a configuration in which ++ is directly used as a stop command and the stopped state is maintained as long as the receiving state continues.

According to such a configuration, it is only necessary to bury the transmitter 7 at the stop point, which simplifies floor construction at the stop point, and in the remote control panel, it is only necessary to switch the energization to the transmitter 7. This is good and contributes to reducing equipment costs.

However, in the configuration according to this prior application, since the common transmitter 7 is used for the receivers 8 and 10 of the same configuration, if the transmitter 7 is buried in the travel route, after passing through the deceleration section, There is still some room for improvement in cases where the operation is such that the vehicle always stops, and only deceleration is desired at a curve, for example.

(Objective of the Invention) The object of the invention is to provide an automatic guided vehicle system that has good stop positioning accuracy, can only run at low speed on curves, etc., and is easy to bury in the road surface. .

(Structure of the Invention) In order to achieve the above-mentioned object, the present invention detects a metal mark provided on a travel route at a predetermined position between the front and rear receivers of a transport vehicle. At the same time, in response to the reception timing of the front receiver, the conveyance vehicle is set to a low-speed running state, and in response to the detection timing of the metal detector, the low-speed running state is set. and a vehicle-mounted control device that holds the conveyance vehicle in a stopped state corresponding to a period in which the metal detector is in a detection state and the rear receiver is in a reception state. This is a characteristic feature.

(Description of Embodiment) An embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS. 1 and 2. FIG. As shown in FIG. 1, receiving coils 11 and 12 having the same configuration are attached to the front and rear of the bottom of the transport vehicle 4, and at predetermined positions of these two coils 11 and 12,
A metal detector 15 is attached.

The detection voltages of the detection coils 11.12 are supplied to receiving circuits 13.14, respectively.
14 is configured to output "1'' when a high frequency transmitter, which will be described later, is located substantially directly below each coil 11.12.

The metal detector 15 is composed of a so-called magnetic field type proximity switch, and when a metal member is present on the road surface directly below it,
It is configured to output ′.

The outputs of the receiving circuits 13 , 14 and the metal detector 15 are supplied to a determination circuit 16 .

The judgment circuit 16 includes a flip-flop 17 which is set at the rising edge of the ``1'' output of the receiving circuit 13 and reset at the rising edge of the ``1'' output of the metal detector 15, and a flip-flop 17 which is set when the output of the receiving circuit 14 and the metal It consists of an AND gate 18 that performs logical product with the output of the detector 15, and a Noritub 7.
The Q output ゛1'° of the 0 knob 17 is a deceleration command, and the A
The configuration is such that the output "1" of the N[) gate 18 serves as a stop command.

In the above configuration, first, we will explain the case where the conveyance vehicle is stopped at a predetermined stopping point, as shown in Fig. 1.
A transmitter 19 (in this example, a coil to which high frequency is energized) is buried at the stop point, and the transmitter 1
A metal plate 20 is buried in front of 9.

Here, the distance between the transmitter 19 and the metal plate 20 is made approximately equal to the distance between the detection coil 12 and the metal detector 15, so that when the carrier arrives, the metal detector 15 detects the metal plate 2o. The configuration is such that detection and signal reception from the transmitter 19 by the detection coil 12 occur simultaneously.

Therefore, when the conveyance vehicle 4 arrives at the stop point, the flip-flop 17 is set to enter the low-speed running state when the detection coil 11 arrives directly above the transmitter 19, and then the metal detector 15 and the detection coil 12
At the time when the signals arrive directly above the metal plate 20 and the transmitting coil 19, respectively, the reset of the flip-flop 17 and the establishment of the logic condition of the AND gate 18 occur at the same time, and therefore, a stop command is issued at the same time as the deceleration command is released, and the conveyance is stopped. The car will stop.

In this state, in the remote control panel, switch 2
1 is turned off, the condition at the AND gate 18 is not satisfied, the stop command is canceled, and the guided vehicle starts traveling.

Next, a case will be described in which the vehicle is caused to travel only at low speeds around curves and the like. In this case, unlike the case in Figure 1,
First, only the transmitter 19 is buried at the starting point of a low-speed traveling section such as a curve, and only the metal plate 20 is buried at the other end point.

Then, at the starting point of the low-speed running section, when the detection coil 11 passes directly above the transmitter 19, the flip-flop 17 is activated and a deceleration command is issued, and then the detection coil 12 passes directly above the transmitter 19. At the time of passing above, the receiving circuit 14 outputs 1'',
In this case, since there is no metal plate, the condition at the AND gate 18 is not satisfied and no stop command is issued.

Therefore, the guided vehicle 4 travels to the end point of the low-speed travel section while maintaining the low-speed travel state.

Next, at the end of the low-speed travel section, the metal detector 15
passes directly above the metal plate 20, the metal detector]
The flip-flop 17 is reset at the rise of the "1" output of 5, and the deceleration command is released.

Therefore, the transport vehicle 4 can travel at low speed only from the start point to the end point of the low speed section, and can travel safely while sufficiently decelerating around curves and the like.

As described above, in this embodiment, by simply changing the buried combination of the transmitter 19 and the metal plate 20, the operation of stopping the vehicle through a low-speed traveling section and the operation of returning to normal traveling speed through the low-speed traveling section can be performed. Can be set selectively,
In addition, burying metal plates in the road surface does not require much effort, and does not result in an increase in signal lines, unlike burying transmitters separately.

Additionally, in general, the combination of the launch coil (in this example, 8o x 80 (vertical x horizontal), 9 turns) and the vehicle side receiving coil (in this example, 40 x 20 (vertical x horizontal), 300 turns), the detection area is i2om. Although it is large and difficult to achieve stopping accuracy, if the transmitter 19 and metal plate 20 are used together at the stopping point as in the present application, and the metal detector 15 is used as the vehicle side detector, the detection area can be limited to ±20 Inm. This also has the effect of improving stop positioning accuracy.

In the above embodiment, a high frequency transmitting coil is used as the transmitter 19, and a combination of a detection coil and a receiving circuit is used as the receiver, but instead of this, an electromagnet excited with direct current is used as the transmitter, A similar effect can be obtained by using a reed switch as a receiver.

(Effects of the Invention) As is clear from the description of the embodiments above, according to the present invention, this type of unmanned! #2 In the loading system, it is possible to improve the accuracy of stop positioning by providing a low-speed section before the stop point, but it is also possible to only run at low speed in arbitrary travel sections such as curves. It has excellent effects such as easy road surface burying work and no need to increase the number of signal lines.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing the system configuration of an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 2 is an electric circuit diagram of the on-board control device, FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a conventional unmanned vehicle system, and FIGS. The figure shows an automatic guided vehicle system according to an earlier application (unpublished) of the present applicant. 11.12... Receiving coil - 13, 14... Receiving circuit 15... Metal detector 16...
......Judgment circuit 17...
・Flip-flop 18・・・・・・・・・AN
D gate 19......Transmitter

Claims (1)

[Claims] (1) A guide line laid along a desired travel route: An automated guided vehicle equipped with an automatic steering function for traveling along the guide line; An automated guided vehicle installed at the front and rear of the guided vehicle, and installed along the travel route. front and rear receivers that receive signals from the transmitter when approaching a transmitter provided in the transport vehicle; a metal detector that detects when approaching a metal sign provided on the route; and a metal detector that sets the guided vehicle to a low speed running state in response to the reception timing of the front receiver; In response to the detection timing, the low-speed running state is canceled, and the guided vehicle is set to a stopped state in response to a period in which the metal detector is in the detection state and the rear receiver is in the reception state. An automated guided vehicle system comprising: an on-vehicle control device that is held;