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To meet customer product demands with short lead- times and minimal tooling costs, it is necessary to have Flexible Manufacturing System with the required degree of material handling flexibility. Automatically Guided Vehicle (AGV) system operating at high level of intelligence is needed to achieve this flexibility. This book presents the current research trends in the area followed by development process of a prototype of a novel AGV system. The AGVs are controlled by Global Vision Feedback through a camera mounted on the ceiling of the manufacturing cell, which provides the images of top view of the cell in real-time. Since the paths are not hard coded, this approach allows change in the AGV paths dynamically, thus making the AGV system truly flexible.

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Dr. Shobhit Verma is currently employed as Sr. Design Engineer at KLA-Tencor in USA. He received his Doctoral Degree from Texas A&M University in 2005 and Bachelor and Masters Degrees from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in 2002. He has more than 12 publications and holds national and international awards in area of design and robotics.

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