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YouTubeGCrites80s said:
Don't you mean the other way around?
GCrites80s said:
Don't you mean the other way around?
Good catch. Yes, I meant the other way around.
Columbus Underground Messageboard » General Columbus Discussion » Development
Honda Acura NSX Sports Car Will be Built in Central Ohio
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CooperGuy
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alexs said:
They also had an early experimental robot, resembling a chest freezer on wheels. It was autonomous meaning it _could_ roll anywhere, but it was made to follow a track delineated by sensors embedded in the concrete floor. This track was also marked in paint on the floor so you knew how to stay out of its way. They used it to shuffle paper reports or other stuff from one plant station to another.It would play various pleasant tunes as it rolled, basically the equivalent of a beeper on a warehouse forklift or an airport terminal people-mover, to warn of its approach. I was told that it had sensors that would stop it if someone stood in its path, but nobody played chicken with it.
Those things are called Automated Guided Vehicles or AGVs. Marysville had only a couple of them while the East Liberty plant had about 60 in the assembly department and about 35 massive ones in the weld dept. Part of my job in the Material Service dept was to manage the operation of the robots during my shift. The original AGVs you're referring to followed an invisible to the eye chemical path laid out on the floor (it could be seen with a black light). They later upgraded to seriously high-tech AGV's that used lasers to follow a virtual path. Although the robots occasionally took unintended detours and refused to cooperate, overall they worked very well. They did indeed have sensors that would detect things and humans in front of them.
To me the coolest thing about the AGV delivery system is that as multiple different parts were being requested line side simultaneously, the system would automatically prioritize the requests, pick the right bin of parts from a storage conveyer, load the AGV to deliver the parts bin line side, and pick an empty bin to return. If everything was running as it should this was done thousands of times each shift w/o any human intervention. You literally sat at a console and watched the AGVs work like ants on a monitor. I really think a book could be written about Honda innovation when it came to parts deliveries.
Posted 4 months ago #
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