Smart warehouse / Article
AMR vs AGV vs Conveyor: Fixed Path or Free Navigation
The whole comparison comes down to one question: how does the machine decide where to go. A conveyor is a fixed line, product rides a set route at a set pace. An AGV follows a fixed path too, but on wheels, guided by wire, tape, or reflectors, and it stops and waits when the lane is blocked. An AMR carries no fixed path at all, it builds a map, localizes with SLAM, and reroutes around an obstacle in real time. Pick by how often your layout and routes change. This article puts the three side by side and shows exactly when each one wins.
The numbers at a glance
01 / The definition
The deciding question is how often the route changes
Most comparisons of these three drown in spec sheets. The useful cut is simpler: does the path the machine follows ever need to change. If it never does, you want fixed infrastructure, which is what a conveyor and an AGV are. A conveyor is a bolted-down line. An AGV is a fixed route on wheels, orienting itself using artificial landmarks such as wires, magnetic strips, optical markers, or reflectors, which makes planning routes labour-intensive and often requires modifying the warehouse.
If the path does need to change, you want a machine that carries its own route in software. That is an AMR. It uses onboard perception, digital maps, and SLAM navigation to figure out where to go next without being stuck in one corridor. Same job, moving a load from A to B, but the AMR decides the route live while the AGV and conveyor have it hard-wired. Everything else in the comparison follows from that one architectural choice.
02 / The three, side by side
Same job, three ways to route it
Each system trades flexibility against throughput and cost. Lined up against each other, the fit for a given floor becomes obvious:
The lines between them are also blurring at the edges, as SLAM and barcode-grid navigation get adapted onto vehicles that were once purely fixed-path. But the underlying trade holds: infrastructure buys throughput on a route that never moves, and onboard intelligence buys flexibility on one that does.
03 / The obstacle test
What each one does when the aisle is blocked
The single clearest way to feel the difference is to put something in the path. A pallet left in the lane, a worker crossing, a forklift parked where it should not be. A conveyor simply jams. A traditional AGV, because its travel envelope is already engineered, will stop and wait until the path is clear. Safe, but every load behind it waits too, and on a busy floor those pauses stack up into lost hours.
An AMR meets the same obstacle and keeps moving. Onboard sensors detect it, and the robot slows, checks for open space, and changes its route when the site's rules allow. That is why the boundary between the technologies is becoming less clear, with SLAM and barcode grids adaptable across a broad range of vehicles, yet the behaviour at an obstacle is still the honest dividing line. If your aisles are predictable, waiting costs you little. If they are chaotic, rerouting is worth paying for.
04 / The cost of change
The purchase price is not the number that matters
An AMR generally costs more up front, because the onboard sensors, compute, and navigation software are not cheap. Taken alone, that makes the AGV or conveyor look like the frugal choice. But the number that actually decides total cost over the machine's life is the cost of change. Rerouting a fixed-path system means physically modifying guides like wires or magnetic strips, which can be time-consuming and costly, especially in dynamic environments.
Rerouting an AMR is a software remap, done in an afternoon without touching the building. So the calculation depends entirely on how static your operation is. A plant that runs the same flow for a decade should buy the cheaper fixed path and never look back. A fulfilment operation that re-slots every season, adds delivery points, and shifts zones will pay the AGV's low sticker price over and over in change orders, and the AMR's higher one just once. Match the machine to how much your floor moves, not to the quote.
05 / On your floor
QR and Laser SLAM, with 360° obstacle avoidance
The theory is only worth anything if the robot holds its position on a real, messy floor. SLAM-guided machines maintain roughly 10 to 30 millimetres of positional accuracy without the infrastructure cost of traditional guidance, which is what makes free navigation practical rather than a lab demo. This is where CODETRACE smart warehouse automation deploys the Latent Lift AMR, which combines QR and Laser SLAM navigation with 360-degree obstacle avoidance, so it holds an accurate position and still reroutes around whatever the floor throws at it.
Combining QR references with laser SLAM is a deliberate hedge: the QR codes give a hard positional anchor where a busy aisle would otherwise confuse pure SLAM, and the laser mapping keeps the robot free to route around obstacles. The result is a machine that stays accurate in a real Malaysian warehouse rather than an empty one. CODETRACE is a member of the NVIDIA Inception program, and integrates and tunes the fleet on-site across Selangor and the Klang Valley, to the traffic and layout your floor actually runs.
06 / Where to start
Map the flow first, then pick the machine
Do not start from the technology, start from your material flow. Draw the moves that actually happen: what goes from where to where, how often, and how stable the route is. Fixed, high-volume moves between two points that never change point straight at a conveyor or an AGV. Moves that shift with re-slotting, mixed traffic, or seasonal layout changes point at an AMR. Most real warehouses end up with a mix, conveyor on the stable trunk, AMRs on the variable last leg.
Movement is also only one layer of a smart warehouse. It sits alongside storage and data, and the walking an AMR removes is only worth automating once you can trust your numbers, which is the job of accurate inventory tracking. When the building itself is full, the answer shifts from moving goods to storing them denser by going vertical. Get the flow map right, and the machine chooses itself.
Fixed route, buy the rail. Changing route, buy the robot. Map the flow first.
FAQ / AMR vs AGV vs conveyor
Questions, answered.
01What is the difference between an AMR and an AGV?
The difference is how each one navigates. An AGV, automated guided vehicle, follows a fixed path defined by physical guides such as wire, magnetic tape, or reflectors, and cannot deviate from it. An AMR, autonomous mobile robot, carries no fixed path. It builds a map of the floor and localizes itself with SLAM, then plans its own route and reroutes around obstacles in real time. AGVs suit stable, repeatable flows, while AMRs suit floors where layouts, traffic, and tasks change.
02Is a conveyor better than an AGV or AMR?
It depends on whether your route ever changes. A conveyor is the most throughput-efficient way to move product along a single, fixed path that never moves, which is why it dominates high-volume production and sortation. But it is civil infrastructure: bolted down, hard to reroute, and blind to anything off the belt. An AGV gives you a fixed route on wheels, and an AMR gives you no fixed route at all. Stable, high-volume flow favours the conveyor; changing flow favours the robots.
03What happens when an AGV meets an obstacle?
A traditional AGV stops and waits for the path to clear, because its travel envelope is fixed and it has no way to plan around the blockage. That pause is safe but it stalls the flow behind it. An AMR handles the same situation differently: onboard sensors detect the obstacle, and the robot slows, checks for open space, and reroutes around it in real time, keeping the workflow moving. In a floor with mixed foot and vehicle traffic, that difference compounds across a shift.
04Is an AMR more expensive than an AGV?
An AMR usually carries a higher upfront cost because of the onboard sensors, compute, and navigation software it needs. But the comparison that matters is the cost of change. Rerouting an AGV means physically moving wires, tape, or reflectors and often modifying the building, whereas rerouting an AMR is a software remap. In an operation that re-slots or re-lays its floor regularly, the AMR's lower cost of change can outweigh its higher purchase price over its life.
05Which should a Malaysian warehouse choose?
Map your material flow first. Fixed, high-volume moves between the same two points favour a conveyor or an AGV, which are cheaper to run where the route never changes. Floors with frequent re-slotting, mixed traffic, or seasonal layout changes favour AMRs. CODETRACE deploys the Latent Lift AMR, which uses combined QR and Laser SLAM navigation with 360-degree obstacle avoidance, and integrates it on-site to the space and traffic realities of a Selangor or Klang Valley operation.