HANNOVER MESSE 2021

••• 7 ••• Innovationen Practical test passed Interface for driverless transport systems T he manufacturer-independ- ent networking of automated guided vehicles has taken a major step forward. Six companies test- ed the VDA 5050 interface togeth- er with their vehicles at the AGV Mesh-Up. The event was part of this year’s TEST CAMP Intralogis- tics of the IFOY AWARD. Production under Industry 4.0 con- ditions requires smooth communi- cation between machines. This also applies to automated guided vehicles from different manufac- turers that are used in the internal material flow. Uniform communi- cation of these vehicles is signifi- cantly simplified by VDA 5050. The communication interface makes it possible to combine different ve- hicles under any control system using a uniform data language. During the first live test in Dort- mund, vehicles from arculus, DS AUTOMOTION, SAFELOG, Siemens AG, SSI SCHÄFER and STILL drove together in a KION Group control system. “This was the first major practical test for the interface to show how the transmission of or- ders and status data via VDA 5050 works. The test scenario in Dort- mund ran reliably over four days and the companies involved were able to try out different details for the vehicles. We are already thinking about a continuation of the AGV Mesh-Up,” explains An- dreas Scherb, responsible for the Automated Guided Vehicles de- partment in the VDMA Materials Handling and Intralogistics Asso- ciation. VDA 5050 is available with the re- vision number 1.1. and represents the current interim status. In the future, a further version will also describe the secured compatibil- ity of PLC-based Automated Guid- ed Vehicles. The so-called AGV Mesh-Up from the VDMA Materials Handling and Intralogistics Association cel- ebrated its world premiere at the IFOY AWARD as part of the TEST CAMP Intralogistics in Dortmund. The name is based on a mesh WLAN in which different compo- nents interlock and are seen as a uniform WLAN. For the vehicles, this means in concrete terms: they drive with different types of navigation (for example, line-guid- ed or contour-based), but com- municate with the higher-level control system in a common data language. Background The interface project was imple- mented by a team of AGV users and AGV manufacturers under the coordination of the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) and the VDMA Ma- terials Handling and Intralogistics Association. The aim is to enable automated transport vehicles, such as tugger trains, AGVs or mo- bile robots, to interact with each other via the master controller via plug-and-play, regardless of man- ufacturer and system. The AGV Mesh-Up celebrated its world premiere at the IFOY AWARD as part of the TEST CAMP Intralogistics in Dortmund. Foto: IFOY Mehr Infos gibt es unter www.jacob-schaltschraenke.de IN STAHL, EDELSTAHL & ALUMINIUM – SO WIE SIE ES BRAUCHEN HOCHWERTIGE SONDERGEHÄUSE // LEERGEHÄUSE FÜR JEDEN EINSATZ DAS BAUKASTENSYSTEM FÜR INDIVIDUELLE LÖSUNGEN UNSERE ALUMINIUMKABINEN