Abstract:This study designs and implements an indoor transportation automated guided vehicle (AGV) system based on the open-source robot operating system (ROS) to solve the problems existing in the current indoor transportation AGV guidance technology, including poor flexibility, high development cost, and tedious path maintenance. The AGV system comprises two parts: the hardware and software layers. In the case of hardware layers, the hardware selection is performed after considering the actual requirements, performance, cost, and other factors. Simultaneously, the AGV chassis and single-steering wheel walking mechanism are built, providing a stable and flexible operating platform for the software layer. The software layer design includes two parts, namely the ROS planning end and human-computer interaction end of a web page. The ROS planning end performs the design of five functional modules (i.e., AGV map construction, autonomous positioning, path planning, path tracking, and autonomous navigation), whereas the human-computer interaction end of the web page realizes the remote human-computer interaction function. The test results show that the ROS-based indoor transportation AGV system can effectively complete the indoor automatic transportation tasks with flexible and simple path maintenance. In conclusion, the whole system has strong feasibility and practical value.