Autonomous Guided Vehicle (AGV) Robot with Pocket Chassis

The Invention

This patent describes an AGV built on a pocket chassis, a modular, compact structural frame that integrates four independently driven swerve motors. The result is a vehicle that can move omnidirectionally, rotate in place, and navigate tight factory corridors that conventional AGVs cannot reach. It targets point-to-point navigation accuracy within 10cm, a payload capacity of up to 100kg, and route changes that can be made in real time without any physical infrastructure modifications.

• Pocket chassis: Compact, modular frame that reduces the vehicle's footprint while maximizing payload capacity. Small but not to be underestimated, much like a well-packed carry-on.
• Four swerve drives: Each wheel rotates independently 360°, enabling omnidirectional movement and zero-turn-radius manoeuvres. It can go sideways. Most vehicles cannot do this. We were pleased.
• Flexible navigation: Adapts to changing factory layouts without requiring infrastructure modifications (no magnetic strips, no rails, no excuses).
• Scalable design: The chassis architecture supports different payload configurations for various industrial use cases, because one size fitting all is rarely true in engineering.

Why This Matters

Material handling accounts for 40 to 50% of production activity in manufacturing environments, and most existing AGV solutions depend on fixed physical guides like magnetic strips or colored lines that are expensive and time-consuming to modify. As factories in Southeast Asia move toward more flexible, reconfigurable production lines, the need for AGVs that can adapt in real time is growing fast. This patent, developed through a collaboration between Politeknik Astra and Asperio as the industry partner, represents a practical step toward more autonomous, intelligent factory logistics.

My Role

Asperio, the company I founded, served as the industry partner on this project, which in practice meant being the side responsible for turning academic research into something that could actually survive contact with a factory floor. While the university team handled prototyping and testing, Asperio contributed product design direction, manufacturing supervision, and the kind of hard-won operational knowledge that only comes from having previously built robots that did not behave as intended. The goal was not just a working prototype but a commercially viable product with real deployment potential, and that lens shaped every decision made along the way.