AGV Wheel Drive Apparatus Pivoting Frames
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Solution Overview
Problem
Automated guided vehicles (AGVs) often stop due to drive wheels floating from the floor when encountering depressed, protruding, or inclined surfaces, disrupting continuous operation in industrial settings.
Innovation Solution
A wheel drive apparatus with a bogie frame, drive frames, rotation shaft portions, and connection arms that maintain a gap to allow vertical movement and maintain contact with the floor, preventing drive wheels from floating, even on uneven surfaces.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the AGV uses a conventional rigid wheel drive system, then the structure is simple and easy to manufacture, but the drive wheels float from the floor when encountering depressed, protruding or inclined surfaces, causing the AGV to stop
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies dynamics by making the drive frame movable relative to the bogie frame through rotation shaft portions, allowing the drive frame to pivot and adjust its position dynamically when the auxiliary wheels encounter floor irregularities. This dynamic adjustment ensures the drive wheels maintain contact with the floor surface, preventing floating and enabling continuous driving without stopping.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the wheel drive system into distinct components: a bogie frame with auxiliary wheels, separate drive frames with drive wheels, and connection portions with connection arms. This segmentation allows each component to function independently and adapt to floor conditions, with the drive frames able to move relative to the bogie frame to maintain wheel-floor contact.
2Adaptability or versatility
If the drive wheels are fixed rigidly to the bogie frame, then the manufacturing precision is easy to achieve, but the drive wheels cannot adapt to floor surface variations and may float from the floor
Solution Approach 1:
The rotation shaft portions enable the drive frames to pivot dynamically, allowing the system to adapt to various floor surface conditions including depressed, protruding, or inclined surfaces. This dynamic capability is achieved through a relatively simple mechanical connection that does not require complex manufacturing or assembly processes.
3Reliability
If a lifting device is added to raise broken drive wheels from the floor, then the AGV can continue driving with remaining wheels, but too many additional devices are included compared to the field situation
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of adding complex lifting devices, the patent uses a dynamic pivot connection that allows the drive frames to naturally adjust their position. When one drive wheel encounters a problem, the movable connection enables other drive wheels to maintain floor contact through natural pivoting, providing redundancy without additional lifting mechanisms.
Data Source
AI summary
A wheel drive apparatus of an automated guide vehicle (AGV) is provided, which includes: a bogie frame; drive frames including a pair of drive wheels installed so that power is transmitted through opposite side surfaces of the bogie frame, and first auxiliary wheels opposite to second auxiliary wheels, with a gap “b” outside of each of the opposite side surfaces of the bogie frame; rotation shaft portions pivotally coupled at shaft points of each of the drive frames and the bogie frame; and connection portions in which first connection arms are respectively formed in the drive frames, and second connection arms are respectively formed in the bogie frame, and the first and second connection arms are vertically connected as a slip rod so as to move up and down at a predetermined gap “a”, and thus which does not cause the drive wheel to float in the air even if any of the auxiliary wheels or any of the drive wheels of the AGV travelling along the floor contacts a depression, a barrier and a slope.