What is an AGV? Vehicle types, loads, and customization.

An AGV (Automated Guided Vehicle) is a vehicle that moves goods without a driver: it receives missions from coordination software, navigates the warehouse or plant on its own, and handles the load with precision — around the clock, at the same pace, every shift.

That's the definition. It gets interesting once you dig into the details — because “AGV” is an entire family of vehicles, not a single product.

AGV, LGV, AMR — what's the difference?

The terms get mixed up often, so let's sort them out:

• AGV is the umbrella term: any automated guided vehicle, regardless of navigation technology.
• LGV (Laser Guided Vehicle) is the AGV with laser navigation — the standard for heavy industrial pallet applications: high precision, stable paths, proven reliability in plants that run 24/7.
• AMR (Autonomous Mobile Robot) navigates “naturally,” using maps built from sensors, with no dedicated infrastructure — flexible, but typically used for lighter loads.

For industrial pallet flows — production, warehousing, shipping — LGVs form the backbone.

Vehicle types

The family covers virtually every form of handling:

• Autonomous pallet truck — picks up and sets down pallets at floor level. The workhorse of simple transfers.
• Counterbalance forklift — lifts pallets to height, with no support arms under the forks: flexible in what it can pick up, including from conveyors or stands.
• Autonomous reach truck — for narrower aisles, with lifting to medium-high heights.
• VNA (Very Narrow Aisle) — operates in very narrow aisles and stores at great height: maximum storage density on the same footprint.
• Unit-load — a roller or chain platform that picks up the load unit directly from conveyors, palletizers, or the end of the line.
• Tugger (tow tractor) — pulls trains of carts: line feeding with many part numbers, in small quantities, over long routes.

In a real system, the types combine: pallet trucks on transfers, forklifts for storage, unit-load vehicles at the line ends — all coordinated by the same software.

What tasks it covers

The same fleet can take on, from one end of the operation to the other:

• Unloading trucks at receiving
• Handling raw materials and feeding production lines with materials and packaging
• Transferring finished products from the lines to the warehouse
• Servicing storage systems — from floor stacks to automated warehouses
• Feeding picking areas
• Automatically loading trucks at shipping

This is what sets it apart from almost any other equipment on the floor: an AGV isn't tied to one zone. In the morning it unloads raw materials, at noon it feeds the lines, in the evening it loads shipments — the same investment works wherever it's needed.

What loads they can carry — and how they're customized

Standard vehicles handle all the usual pallet types — EURO, CHEP, industrial, block, or stringer — and this is where the less-known part begins: the vehicle adapts to your goods, not the other way around.

• Extending forks for double-deep storage (two pallets deep)
• Carrying two pallets at once, side by side
• Dedicated grippers for rolls, reels, drums, or atypical loads
• Configurations for refrigerated and frozen environments, down to temperatures of -25°C and below
• Geometries adapted to your facility's existing aisles and doorways

That's why the right question at the start of a project isn't “what vehicles do you have in your catalog,” but “what goods do you move, at what pace, through what spaces” — and the vehicles are configured to the answer.

One vehicle doesn't make a system

A single AGV is just a piece of equipment. The value appears when the fleet works in a coordinated way: orchestration software distributes missions in real time, the vehicles share tasks among themselves, and if one stops, the rest take over. Connected to the WMS/ERP, the system knows where every pallet is at every second — full traceability, from receiving to shipping.

Want to see what a fleet sized for your operation would look like? Request analysis →