Integration of mobile vehicles for automated material handling using Profibus and IEEE 802.11 networks

This paper focuses on a method to integrate mobile devices such as a mobile robot, automated guided vehicle, and unmanned container transporter to form an automated material handling system. In this paper, the stationary devices are connected via a Profibus network while the mobile devices are commu...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on industrial electronics (1982) 2002-06, Vol.49 (3), p.693-701
Main Authors: Suk Lee, Kyung Chang Lee, Man Hyung Lee, Harashima, F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Access protocols
Automated
Automation
Containers
Converters
Delay
Materials handling
Mobile communication systems
Mobile robots
Networks
Protocol
Robots
Transporter
Uncertainty
Vehicles
Wireless application protocol
Wireless communication
Wireless LAN
Wireless networks
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper focuses on a method to integrate mobile devices such as a mobile robot, automated guided vehicle, and unmanned container transporter to form an automated material handling system. In this paper, the stationary devices are connected via a Profibus network while the mobile devices are communicating via an IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN. In order to integrate these two networks, a protocol converter is developed on a PC platform that runs two interacting processes with shared internal buffers. The protocol converter performs a role of translator between two different protocols by converting the format of a data frame. In addition to this basic conversion function, the protocol converter has a virtual polling algorithm to reduce the uncertainty involved in accessing the wireless network. Finally, the integrated network. of Profibus and IEEE 802.11 is experimentally evaluated for its data latency and throughput, which shows the feasibility of the Profibus-IEEE 802.11 network for industrial applications involving mobile devices.
ISSN:0278-0046
1557-9948
DOI:10.1109/TIE.2002.1005397