Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV)

A material transport robot that follows fixed physical or magnetic guidance paths through a warehouse, distinguished from AMRs by reliance on pre-defined routes.

Automated Guided Vehicles navigate using embedded floor tracks, magnetic tape, or optical guidance markers rather than onboard sensor-based environmental mapping. This infrastructure-bound navigation model makes AGVs predictable and reliable in stable, high-volume transport corridors but limits their ability to adapt to layout changes, dynamic traffic conditions, or variable task assignments. AGVs are typically deployed in repetitive, high-volume transport applications - pallet movement between fixed points, cross-dock conveyance - where the investment in physical guidance infrastructure is justified by task consistency. The distinction from AMRs matters for deployment economics: AGV deployments require facility modification costs that AMR deployments largely avoid, and AGVs cannot be easily redeployed when operational layouts change.

Related terms: autonomous-mobile-robot · fleet-sizing · workflow-bottleneck