Automated guided vehicle systems, state-of-the-art control algorithms and techniques

Abstract

Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) form a large and important part of the logistic transport systems in today's industry. They are used on a large scale, especially in Europe, for over a decade. Current employed AGV systems and current systems offered by global manufacturers almost all operate in a centralized way. One central controller controls the whole fleet of AGVs. The authors do see a trend towards decentralized systems where AGVs make individual decisions favoring flexibility, robustness, and scalability of transportation. With the paradigm shift of Industry 4.0 and future requirements, more research is done towards the decentralization of AGV-systems. And global leading manufacturers start to take an active interest. That said, this implementation seems still in infancy. Currently, literature is full of research on central as well as on decentral control techniques and algorithms. For researchers in the field and for AGV developers, it is hard to find structure in the growing amount of algorithms for various types of applications. This paper is, to this purpose, meant to provide a good overview of all AGV-related control algorithms and techniques. Not only those that were used in the early stages of AGVs, but also the algorithms and techniques used in the most recent AGV-systems, as well as the algorithms and techniques with high potential.

Integration and Evaluation of Intra-Logistics Processes in Flexible Production Systems Based on OEE Metrics, with the Use of Computer Modelling and Simulation of AGVs

“…The AGVs are classified as service robots for professional purposes in manufacturing environments and broad review of AGV is presented in [6,28].…”

“…In connection with the flexible production, there are also increased requirements regarding the flexibility and reliability of internal transport systems, associated with the production of short series of various products and thus requiring more transport operations [3]. In response to these needs, the Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) are used a lot more widely, which enables full automation 2 of 15 of transport operations and can handle various transport routes using only computer navigation systems [4][5][6].…”

Assessing Long Distance Communication Alternatives for the Remote Control of AGVs

“…The presented techniques include a network delay estimator and a position predictor, to effectively operate a controller with a period of 100 ms. In [6], a list of essential processes executed by AGVs is introduced. It includes task allocation, localization, path planing, motion planning, and vehicle management.…”

Manufacturing 4.0 Operations Scheduling with AGV Battery Management Constraints

“…In fact, AGVs are driverless, their routes can be redefined and transport request fulfillments can be reviewed without the infrastructure changes, which offers faster and more intuitive ways of adapting an existing system to new business rules [9]. Battery management on AGVs has an impact on the overall performance of the manufacturing system [8]; however, previous studies omitted this factor [10] which led us to consider it through this work. More precisely, this paper presents a scheduling approach that supports processing, transport and vehicles' battery replenishment tasks.…”