Effective as of July 01, 2025, the industrial drive technology (IDT) business of ebm‑papst, including this portfolio, has been acquired by Siemens AG and is no longer part of ebm-pabst.
For more information and to place your orders, please visit the Siemens website shown below.
Automated guided vehicles have been in use for a long time in a wide range of areas. However, until now, they have been driven in a rigid and inflexible manner along line markings on the floor. This meant that it was not possible to selectively drive up to production stations or to change the routes.
ArgoDrive drive technology enables AGVs to achieve complete omnidirectional freedom in their movement. This enables you to develop a fully automated AGV that avoids obstacles with ease, masters inclines effortlessly, and transports even heavy goods to their destination quickly and safely. Our revolutionary drive technology makes limited maneuverability and oversized systems a thing of the past.
Whether it is in medical technology, mobile robotics, automotive production or intralogistics ArgoDrive is powerful, clever and extremely mobile. The combination of its strengths makes it the best choice for all automated guided vehicles (AGVs) that have to perfectly master the most demanding challenges. After all, the performance of a vehicle depends largely on the drive and wheels.
There are different requirements for the technology used depending on the application. Below you will find the most important information on the ArgoDrive drive system’s strengths and areas of application in each industry.
No matter whether it is used in hospitals, pharmaceutical production, rehabilitation facilities or health care applications in domestic environments, the scenarios in which automated guided vehicles are used in the health sector are complex. Compact drive units that can be easily integrated into a vehicle are now paving the way for almost unrestricted mobility in many medical applications.
With our omnidirectional drive system, your AGVs can transport and maneuver even heavy loads, such as X-ray machines or hospital beds, effortlessly and completely safely. Light, sensitive or fragile goods, such as medicines, sanitary products or meals, can also be transported. This enables processes to be designed more efficiently and to make better use of resources.
If processes and the flow of goods are having to be designed more and more flexibly in production, AMRs (autonomous mobile robots) will play an increasingly important role. After all, both machines and entire production lines will have to be quickly retrofitted thanks to modularization.
The solution: Robotics transport, permanently installed on AGVs. This means that it is no longer a challenge to transport things to the next workstation continuously and automatically.
Our ArgoDrive fully automatic drive system achieves exactly that: highly flexible, safe and precise maneuvering. The ArgoDrive's compact design enables a low installation height without impairing performance. Thanks to its omnidirectional mobility, it offers almost unrestricted mobility.
Batch sizes are becoming smaller, product life cycles are shorter, rigid conveyor belts and inflexible production lines are giving way to modular concepts. In addition, manufacturing and storage areas are expensive and optimizing space saves costs. For track-guided AGVs in particular, a lot of space has to be reserved for the driving routes.
The solution: fast, flexible and reliable material flow concepts – with AGVs that can navigate freely. This increases the dynamics and speed and, therefore, the material throughput.
Our revolutionary drive technology makes limited maneuverability and oversized systems a thing of the past. ArgoDrive is the right drive technology for a fully automated AGV that avoids obstacles in intralogistics with ease, easily masters inclines and different floor coverings, and transports heavy goods to their destination quickly, flexibly and safely.
If vehicle body construction in automotive production is to be fast, efficient and yet extremely safe for the employees in the plant, almost nothing works without AGVs. With our intelligently controllable drive system, we are making an important
Our intelligently controllable drive system makes an important contribution to ensuring that a wide variety of components can be transported to the right production station at the right time. Thanks to omnidirectional mobility, this is maximally precise and flexible.
AGVs are playing an increasingly important role in intralogistics and automated production. There is high demand for AGVs that maneuver even heavy loads in a highly flexible, safe and precise way. Retrofitting your systems with the ArgoDrive enables you to significantly increase the performance of your AGV and gain flexibility, safety and power.
ArgoDrive can be used not only for new vehicles. Thanks to retrofitting, existing transport vehicles can also be easily converted so that you can benefit from the same advantages.
No matter which logistics requirements you want your AGV to handle, ArgoDrive will make sure the job gets done. With the Light, Standard, and Heavy variants as well as the option of combining several driving/steering systems, the possibilities are endless.
When it comes to AGVs, safety is the number one priority in order to protect people and the surrounding area. The right drive solution helps significantly in operating AGVs safely and efficiently. After all, any actions must be carried out safely via the drives. ArgoDrive is ideally equipped for this.
With its ArgoDrive in a setup with other automation components from cooperation partner SIEMENS, ebm‑papst offers equipment packages for AGVs that make it easy for vehicle manufacturers to obtain the necessary TüV approval for the AGV safety concept.
In this setup, the ArgoDrive is actuated and monitored by 2 PDC 600F (Profi Drive Controller with integrated safety functions) and a higher-level S7-1500F as a vehicle control system.
The ArgoDrive driving steering system offers all relevant safety indicators such as MTTFd and B10 values for its integrated encoders and the integrated brake. Both the engine feedback signals and the steering angle position are made available by the PDCs of the higher-level vehicle control system.
The signals provided are read in the certified safety components PDC 600 F and S7-1500 F. The communication between PLC and drive controller takes place via Profinet and ProfiSave. The higher-level S7 control system from Siemens evaluates the redundant steering angle and encoder signals via a crosscheck and thus provides Extended Safety functions (STO, SS1, SLT, SLS and SSM) on board. Any additional components are therefore omitted and cabling is limited to a minimum. The system is fully integrated into the SIMOVE world.
Yes, ebm‑papst has already integrated the necessary components for implementing a redundancy-based safety concept in the compact ArgoDrive drive solution. This driving/steering system combines propulsion and steering functions in a single assembly and has the necessary sensors and all the necessary connections.
Every ArgoDrive – designed to make it very easy to implement AGVs with omnidirectional maneuverability – already has redundant encoder systems. In addition to the motors’ hall sensors, an additional second encoder provides the required redundancy to reliably detect the exact speed. An encoder system designed for redundancy is also available for determining the steering angle. This saves AGV manufacturers from spending more time on a higher level of integration thanks to separate encoders.
The high quality standards of ebm‑papst ensure that the drive solution has a long service life and is failsafe. There is no need for maintenance during the ArgoDrive’s entire service life. This sets it apart from more mechanically complex drive concepts, such as the Mecanum wheel, where regular cleaning and relubrication with oil are necessary, for example.
If the wheel surface is naturally worn down after a long period of operation, it can be easily replaced without removing the drive unit.
In addition, the ArgoDrive’s unique design means that, unlike other omnidirectional drive units, it has no moving cables or contact points in the driving/steering system. The drive assemblies and sensors are also enclosed in the housing and are therefore not exposed to ambient conditions. This eliminates another potential cause of failure.
In an emergency, an AGV must come to a halt within a short distance that is appropriate for the relevant situation. To do this, the drive system must carry out a command for a safe stop in the event of danger. In this situation, high braking power is key.
ArgoDrive can initiate immediate emergency braking as well as controlled motor deceleration at up to 2.5 m/s2. The mechanical emergency braking torque is 60 Nm, while the motor can decelerate with up to 30 Nm. The mechanical brake is also used as a holding brake, for example, to stop damaged AGVs from unintentionally rolling away, even on ramps.
In an emergency braking process, an AGV with four ArgoDrive installed will of course stop even faster than one with two units plus support wheels, because all four wheels then brake at the same time. Even if the power supply on the AGV fails, the ArgoDrive is held securely to prevent uncontrolled movements.
In addition to the redundancy of the encoder systems for the steering angle and speed of the integrated motors, the complete drive system must be highly failsafe. Key values such as the MTTFd (mean time to dangerous failure) of electronic components are a must for AGV designers. ebm‑papst has these important values for the ArgoDrive ready for AGV developers, such as MTTFd for the sensors and B10 for the brake.
Interested in ArgoDrive or have a question about our revolutionary drive system? We would be pleased to find the right solution for making your transport vehicle even better with the ArgoDrive. We look forward to hearing from you.