AI for AGVs takes us ‘one step closer to autonomous factories’
26 June 2025 
Image: Siemens
Siemens has announced plans to integrate an AI industrial copilot for operation and maintenance into driverless transport systems and mobile robots. The development will help users to configure AMRs (autonomous mobile robots) and AGVs (automated guided vehicles), assigning them to tasks such as transporting materials across shop floors.
As mobile transport robots operate increasingly as autonomous physical agents powered by AI, the Operations Copilot will act as a user interface.
The AI agents, developed specifically for use with AMRs and AGVs, will support both the commissioning and operation of individual vehicles and complete fleets. Commissioning these vehicles can be complex and time-consuming. They need to be integrated into a factory’s existing IT and OT infrastructures, and configured for their routes and transfer stations.
Siemens’s Operations Copilot for AGVs is designed to streamline this task. It uses a vehicle’s sensors and cameras to generate a detailed understanding of its environment. The copilot can access technical documentation about the vehicle’s components and retrieve real-time system data, allowing commissioning engineers and operators to work more efficiently, resolve issues faster, and achieve rapid deployments.
“By integrating both physical and virtual AI agents into our Operations Copilot, we’re unlocking a new dimension of interaction between humans, robotics and AI,” explains Rainer Brehm, CEO of Siemens’ Factory Automation division. “This enables our customers to deploy autonomous transport systems more quickly, operate them efficiently, and enhance safety – bringing us one step closer to a fully autonomous factory.”
Siemens has also released software that performs failsafe monitoring of autonomous vehicle speeds, allowing the protective fields of safety laser scanners to be adjusted dynamically in real time. The TÜV-certified software, called Safe Velocity, is compatible with hardware and software from various AGV manufacturers, and enhances existing safety systems to meet industrial safety standards.
The software reduces the need for additional safety hardware, thus simplifying system architectures, saving space, lowering engineering complexity, and reducing cabling requirements – without compromising functional safety.
The Safe Velocity virtual agent supervises autonomous vehicles and can cooperate with other AGV and AMR agents. This way, Siemens says it is building a multi-agent system where the Operations Copilot orchestrates both physical and virtual AI agents, enabling seamless interactions and deeper integration between the real and the digital worlds.
In the future, the Operations Copilot will interact with AI agents such as Safe Velocity to analyse targeted data from safety laser scanners, and to monitor AGV speeds.
