Digital Twin for automated guided vehicles fleet management

As digital transformation is gaining momentum, nowadays each product is usually accompanied by a software system that can be used to manage it remotely. Automated Guided Vehicles are not an exception and are currently managed by systems that lack features required by the Industry 4.0 digital transformation. The current paper proposes upgrading traditional AGV management systems to have Digital Twins capabilities, stating, and analyzing the benefits of this change. A prototype Industry 4.0 factory with several AGVs is presented together with the current state of an ongoing project for developing Digital Twins for the AGVs. It serves as a shared ecosystem for collaboration to carry out factory layout modelling and enhance the AGV’s control software.