Vehicle in the context of Factory automation

Transport (in British English) or transportation (in American English) is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land (rail and road), water, cable, pipelines, and space. The field can be divided into infrastructure, vehicles, and operations. Transport enables human trade, which is essential for the development of civilizations.

Transport infrastructure consists of fixed installations, including roads, railways, airways, waterways, canals, and pipelines, as well as terminals such as airports, railway stations, bus stations, warehouses, trucking terminals, refueling depots (including fuel docks and fuel stations), and seaports. Terminals may be used both for the interchange of passengers and cargo and for maintenance.

A mode of transport is a method or way of travelling, or of transporting people or cargo. The different modes of transport include air, water, and land transport, which includes rails or railways, road and off-road transport. Other modes of transport also exist, including pipelines, cable transport, and space transport. Human-powered transport and animal-powered transport are sometimes regarded as distinct modes, but they may lie in other categories such as land or water transport.

In general, transportation refers to the moving of people, animals, and other goods from one place to another, and means of transport refers to the transport facilities used to carry people or cargo according to the chosen mode. Examples of the means of transport include automobile, airplane, ship, truck, and train. Each mode of transport has a fundamentally different set of technological solutions. Each mode has its own infrastructure, vehicles, transport operators and operations.

Road transport or road transportation is a type of transport using roads. Transport on roads can be roughly grouped into the transportation of goods and transportation of people. In many countries licensing requirements and safety regulations ensure a separation of the two industries. Movement along roads may be by bike, automobile, bus, truck, or by animal such as horse or oxen. Standard networks of roads were adopted by Romans, Persians, Aztec, and other early empires, and may be regarded as a feature of empires. Cargo may be transported by trucking companies, while passengers may be transported via mass transit. Commonly defined features of modern roads include defined lanes and signage. Various classes of road exist, from two-lane local roads with at-grade intersections to controlled-access highways with all cross traffic grade-separated.

The nature of road transportation of goods depends on, apart from the degree of development of the local infrastructure, the distance the goods are transported by road, the weight and volume of an individual shipment, and the type of goods transported. For short distances and light small shipments, a van or pickup truck may be used. For large shipments even if less than a full truckload a truck is more appropriate. (Also see Trucking and Hauling below). In some countries cargo is transported by road in horse-drawn carriages, donkey carts or other non-motorized mode. Delivery services are sometimes considered a separate category from cargo transport. In many places, fast food is transported on roads by various types of vehicles. For inner city delivery of small packages and documents bike couriers are quite common.

A filling station (also known as a gas station [US] or petrol station [UK/AU]) is a facility that sells fuel and engine lubricants for motor vehicles. It serves as a local fuel depot and retailer who receive fuel products from refineries (via regular tank truck resupplies), keep the fuels in (typically underground) storage tanks, and distribute individual product to motorist consumers at a daily varied price.

The most common fuels sold are motor fuels such as gasoline (a.k.a. petrol, often as multiple products according to different octane ratings) and diesel fuel, as well as liquified petroleum gas (LPG, i.e. autogas), compressed natural gas, compressed hydrogen, hydrogen compressed natural gas, liquid hydrogen, kerosene, alcohol fuels (like methanol, ethanol, butanol, and propanol), biofuels (like straight vegetable oil and biodiesel), or other types of alternative fuels. Fuel dispensers are used to pump fuel into the fuel tanks within vehicles, gauge the volume of fuel transferred to the vehicle, and calculate the financial cost the consumer must pay. Besides fuel pumps, another significant device found in filling stations and capable of refueling certain (compressed-air) vehicles is an air compressor. However, these are generally used to inflate car tires.

Sustainable transport is transportation sustainable in terms of their social and environmental impacts. Components for evaluating sustainability include the particular vehicles used; the source of energy; and the infrastructure used to accommodate the transport (streets and roads, railways, airways, waterways and canals). Transportation sustainability is largely being measured by transportation system effectiveness and efficiency as well as the environmental and climate impacts of the system. Transport systems have significant impacts on the environment. In 2018, it contributed to around 20% of global CO₂ emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions from transport are increasing at a faster rate than any other energy using sector. A 2023 study published in Journal of Transport Geography found that shared electric bicycle systems reduce urban transport-related carbon emissions by about 108–120 grams per kilometre, particularly in non-central urban areas and when powered by low-carbon electricity sources.Road transport is also a major contributor to local air pollution and smog.

Sustainable transport systems make a positive contribution to the environmental, social and economic sustainability of the communities they serve. Transport systems exist to provide social and economic connections, and people quickly take up the opportunities offered by increased mobility, with poor households benefiting greatly from low carbon transport options. The advantages of increased mobility need to be weighed against the environmental, social and economic costs that transport systems pose. Short-term activity often promotes incremental improvement in fuel efficiency and vehicle emissions controls while long-term goals include migrating transportation from fossil-based energy to other alternatives such as renewable energy and use of other renewable resources. The entire life cycle of transport systems is subject to sustainability measurement and optimization.

Sledding, sledging or sleighing is a winter sport typically carried out in a prone or seated position on a vehicle generically known as a sled (North American), a sledge (British), or a sleigh. It is the basis of three Olympic sports: luge, skeleton and bobsledding. When practised on sand, it is known as a form of sandboarding. In Russia sledges are used for maritime activities including fishing and commuting from island to island on ice.

Navigation is a field of study that focuses on the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another. The field of navigation includes four general categories: land navigation, marine navigation, aeronautic navigation, and space navigation. It is also the term of art used for the specialized knowledge used by navigators to perform navigation tasks. All navigational techniques involve locating the navigator's position compared to known locations or patterns. Navigation, in a broader sense, can refer to any skill or study that involves the determination of position and direction. In this sense, navigation includes orienteering and pedestrian navigation.

For marine navigation, this involves the safe movement of ships, boats and other nautical craft either on or underneath the water using positions from navigation equipment with appropriate nautical charts (electronic and paper). Navigation equipment for ships is mandated under the requirements of the SOLAS Convention, depending on ship size. For land navigation, this involves the movement of persons, animals and vehicles from one place to another by means of navigation equipment (such as a compass or GNSS receivers), maps and visual navigation marks across urban or rural environments. Aeronautic (air) navigation involves piloting an aircraft from one geographic position to another position while monitoring the position as the flight progresses.

A dashboard (also called dash, instrument panel or IP, or fascia) is a control panel set within the central console of a vehicle, boat, or cockpit of an aircraft or spacecraft. Usually located directly ahead of the driver (or pilot), it displays instrumentation and controls for the vehicle's operation. An electronic equivalent may be called an electronic instrument cluster, digital instrument panel, digital dash, digital speedometer or digital instrument cluster. By analogy, a succinct display of various types of related visual data in one place is also called a dashboard.

A rocket (from Italian: rocchetto, lit. ''bobbin/spool'', and so named for its shape) is an elongated flying vehicle that uses a rocket engine to accelerate without using any surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Unlike jet engines, rockets are fuelled entirely by propellant which they carry, without the need for oxygen from air; consequently a rocket can fly in the vacuum of space. Rockets suffer deceleration by atmospheric drag in air, and operate more efficiently outside the atmosphere.

Multistage rockets are capable of attaining escape velocity from Earth and therefore can achieve unlimited maximum altitude. Compared with airbreathing engines, rockets are lightweight and powerful and capable of generating large accelerations. To control their flight, rockets may use momentum, airfoils, auxiliary reaction engines, gimballed thrust, momentum wheels, deflection of the exhaust stream, propellant flow, and spin, or may simply fly in a ballistic trajectory under the influence of gravity.

Traffic is the movement of vehicles and pedestrians along land routes.

Traffic laws govern and regulate traffic, while rules of the road include traffic laws and informal rules that may have developed over time to facilitate the orderly and timely flow of traffic. Organized traffic generally has well-established priorities, lanes, right-of-way, and traffic control at intersections. (International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea govern the oceans and influence some laws for navigating domestic waters.)

In admiralty law, prizes (from the Old French prise, "taken, seized") are equipment, vehicles, vessels, and cargo captured during armed conflict. The most common use of prize in this sense is the capture of an enemy ship and its cargo as a prize of war. In the past, the capturing force would commonly be allotted a share of the worth of the captured prize. Nations often granted letters of marque that would entitle private parties to capture enemy property, usually ships. Once the ship was secured on friendly territory, it would be made the subject of a prize case: an in rem proceeding in which the court determined the status of the condemned property and the manner in which the property was to be disposed of.

Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, mainly by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines. Automation has been achieved by various means including mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, electrical, electronic devices, and computers, usually in combination. Complicated systems, such as modern factories, airplanes, and ships typically use combinations of all of these techniques. The benefits of automation includes labor savings, reducing waste, savings in electricity costs, savings in material costs, and improvements to quality, accuracy, and precision.

Automation includes the use of various equipment and control systems such as machinery, processes in factories, boilers, and heat-treating ovens, switching on telephone networks, steering, stabilization of ships, aircraft and other applications and vehicles with reduced human intervention. Examples range from a household thermostat controlling a boiler to a large industrial control system with tens of thousands of input measurements and output control signals. Automation has also found a home in the banking industry. It can range from simple on-off control to multi-variable high-level algorithms in terms of control complexity.

A window is an opening in a wall, door, roof, or vehicle that allows the exchange of light and may also allow the passage of sound and sometimes air. Modern windows are usually glazed or covered in some other transparent or translucent material, a sash set in a frame in the opening; the sash and frame are also referred to as a window. Many glazed windows may be opened, to allow ventilation, or closed to exclude inclement weather. Windows may have a latch or similar mechanism to lock the window shut or to hold it open by various amounts.

Types include the eyebrow window, fixed windows, hexagonal windows, single-hung, and double-hung sash windows, horizontal sliding sash windows, casement windows, awning windows, hopper windows, tilt, and slide windows (often door-sized), tilt and turn windows, transom windows, sidelight windows, jalousie or louvered windows, clerestory windows, lancet windows, skylights, roof windows, roof lanterns, bay windows, oriel windows, thermal, or Diocletian, windows, picture windows, rose windows, emergency exit windows, stained glass windows, French windows, panel windows, double/triple-paned windows, and witch windows.

A steering wheel (also called a driving wheel, a hand wheel, or simply wheel) is a type of steering control in vehicles.

Steering wheels are used in most modern land vehicles, including all mass-production automobiles, buses, light and heavy trucks, as well as tractors and tanks. The steering wheel is the part of the steering system that the driver manipulates; the rest of the steering system responds to such driver inputs. This can be through direct mechanical contact as in recirculating ball or rack and pinion steering gears, without or with the assistance of hydraulic power steering, HPS, or as in some modern production cars with the help of computer-controlled motors, known as electric power steering.