Now, under the coordination of the German Association of the Automotive Industry VDA and the VDMA Materials Handling and Intralogistics Association and with the support of the KIT Institute for Materials Handling and Logistics Systems IFL, the interface has been further developed and version 2.0.0 has been introduced.

The new version defines the necessary and optional parameters for an automated guided vehicle (factsheet), which must be communicated to the control system by the AGV in advance. In addition to changes to the logic of order acceptance and adjustments to the mandatory spelling of enumerations, corrections have also been made to the permitted characters and field lengths.

Robert Cameron, Head of the VDA's Production, Logistics and Aftermarket department, says: "The enhanced VDA 5050 interface is a milestone for the industry.With VDA 5050, we are making it much easier to handle increasingly complex production chains, and the interface offers correspondingly great opportunities across all branches of industry. There is also huge interest beyond the automotive industry."

Andreas Scherb, Head of the Automated Guided Vehicles department at the VDMA Materials Handling and Intralogistics Association, emphasizes: "The new version implements important experiences from the first customer projects and from the live test at the AGV Mesh-Up last year."

Peter Kiermaier, Head of Logistics Planning at the BMW Group plants in Dingolfing and Debrecen: "As an active member of the project group, the BMW Group has supported the development of VDA 5050 from the very beginning and has chaired the VDA project group since March 2021. We are already successfully using VDA 5050 in several projects with smart transport robots, autonomous tugger trains and autonomous forklifts. It is set as the standard in tenders for new automated guided vehicles. Thanks to the simplified connection and integration of new autonomous vehicle types, the expectations of VDA 5050 have been fully met to date. The next steps to expand VDA 5050, such as the integration of maps and zones, will lead to further synergies."

Version VDA 5050 2.0.0 is available to users in English and German on the VDA website.