Holonic manufacturing system for distributed control of automated guided vehicles

Automated guided vehicle (AGV) systems traditionally utilize a central controller to assign transportation tasks among vehicles. Because of its rigidity, a centralized architecture may not suitable for modern manufacturing with its rapidly changing markets, demands for products with higher quality, smaller batch sizes, customer specifications, and shorter delivery times. This research applies concepts from holonic manufacturing systems to develop a distributed AGV control system that is flexible and robust in the presence of disturbances. We present the architecture of the holonic manufacturing system, a coordination strategy based on contract nets, and simulation results that indicate an improvement in utilization when compared with traditional centralized control.