A sustainable and conflict-free operation of AGVs in a square topology

Abstract Automated guided vehicles (AGVs) are now very often used as basic equipment in transportation systems. The efficiency of such systems depends on many factors. One of the crucial issues is collision and deadlock-free operation. In this area, many algorithms have been proposed. Most of them are suitable for systems with a small number of AGVs. Moreover, new areas of implementation of transportation systems with a large number of AGVs have recently appeared. Very often, these transportation systems have a regular structure, e.g. mesh-like. In this paper, a new method for describing such systems with unidirectional, bidirectional or multiple lane flow-paths is proposed. In this method, a layout of a transportation system is divided into squares and described by a matrix. The motion of an AGV is considered as a movement from square to square with a fixed average speed. For this reason, a new method for AGV collision and deadlock prevention is proposed. This method is proposed based on chains of reservations. It is suitable for implementation in transportation systems with a square structure and with a large number of AGVs.

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