The AGV robot is equipped with automatic guidance devices such as electromagnetic or optical, which can travel along the prescribed guidance path, and has safety protection and various load transfer functions. Its rise originated from Kiva robots.

Kiva robot, which began using QR code navigation in 2003. Kiva was acquired by Amazon for 775 million yuan in 2012, and since then, the technology more than a decade ago has become the most popular navigation mode in China, and now AGV has become the most popular navigation mode.

AGV is characterized by wheeled movement, and it is similar to rail transit. Although AGV now has expensive and other pain points, with the popularity of 5G commercial, the cost of use will be greatly reduced. Luan Xuefeng, vice president of SUNING Logistics Research Institute, believes that at present, each AGV robot has its own "brain" (chip), and the price is about 80, 000 yuan. If the 5G technology is mature, it can be managed in an intensive way in the future, and hundreds of AGV robots can be managed through the "central brain" to reduce the cost.

In 2016, machine vision and face recognition began to be commercialized. AMR, an intelligent robot based on computer vision, is gradually known. The name of AMR is similar to that of AGV, but AMR is very different from AGV in terms of core technology and operation mode.