Waiting-Time-Optimized Path Planning of Multiple Automatic Guided Vehicles Using Augmented Topology Map

In intelligent manufacturing scenarios, efficient path planning methods are of great significance to the safe and stable operation of multiple automatic guided vehicles (AGVs). This paper contributes a path planning method of multi-AGV considering waiting time optimization, which improves the operation efficiency of multi-AGV. Firstly, aiming at the problems of large granularity and low utilization of spatial resources in traditional topology map planning, an augmented topology map is proposed to improve the utilization rate of geospatial information. Based on this map structure, an improved DFS (depth first search) algorithm is presented to obtain multiple alternative paths during a single search. Moreover, based on the selected path, a corresponding model is established to optimize the waiting time of multi-AGV motion planning scheme, which is solved by genetic algorithm. In addition, the simulations on the multi-AGV platform validate the efficiency of the suggested path planning method.