An automated guided vehicle follows fixed, pre-defined routes to move materials through factories and warehouses — the simple, reliable, decades-old ancestor of today's free-roaming mobile robots.
An AGV is a driverless cart that follows a set path — historically a wire or magnetic strip in the floor — to haul materials around a factory or warehouse. It's simple and dependable, but it can't reroute on its own.
Long before robots roamed warehouses freely, driverless carts were already hauling materials along fixed tracks. The automated guided vehicle (AGV) is that workhorse — simple, reliable, and still everywhere in industry.
What it is
An AGV is a driverless vehicle that follows a pre-defined route to move loads — pallets, carts, parts — around a factory or warehouse. Classic AGVs follow a physical guide: a wire buried in the floor, a magnetic tape strip, or optical markers. The vehicle senses the guide and tracks it, stopping if something blocks the path. Its autonomy is limited: it goes where the track goes.
Follow the fixed path
The route is engineered into the environment. The AGV reliably follows it — simple and predictable, but it can't choose a new way around an obstacle.
AGV vs AMR — the key distinction
The modern contrast defines the field:
AGV — follows fixed, pre-defined paths; when blocked, it simply waits. Infrastructure (tape/wire) must be installed and changed to alter routes. Cheap, extremely reliable, great for high-volume repetitive transport.
Autonomous mobile robot (AMR) — navigates freely using onboard sensing and SLAM, building its own map and routing around obstacles and people dynamically. Flexible but more complex.
Neither is strictly better: AGVs win where routes are fixed and throughput is high; AMRs win where flexibility and shared human spaces matter.
Strengths and limits
Reliable and safe. Deterministic routes make behavior predictable — easy to certify around workers.
Proven and mature. Decades of industrial use; well-understood.
Inflexible. Rerouting means re-laying guides; a blockage stalls the vehicle until cleared.
Infrastructure cost. Installing and maintaining floor guides.
Many facilities run both — AGVs for fixed heavy-haul loops, AMRs for flexible tasks.
Why it matters
The AGV is the foundation of automated material handling — the reliable backbone that moved factories toward automation and set the stage for today's free-roaming warehouse robots. Understanding the AGV-vs-AMR trade-off is essential to designing any material-transport system.
