Hierarchical traffic control for partially decentralized coordination of multi AGV systems in industrial environments

This paper deals with decentralized coordination of Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs). We propose a hierarchical traffic control algorithm, that implements path planning on a two layer architecture. The high-level layer describes the topological relationships among different areas of the environment. In the low-level layer, each area includes a set of fixed routes, along which the AGVs have to move. An algorithm is also introduced for the automatic definition of the route map itself. The coordination among the AGVs is obtained exploiting shared resources (i.e. centralized information) and local negotiation (i.e. decentralized coordination). The proposed strategy is validated by means of simulations using real plant.

I. Introduction

This paper deals with the path planning and coordination of multiple Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) in an automated warehouse. Coordinated motion of groups of autonomous vehicles is a relevant topic in the field of mobile multi-robot systems, and has thus been widely addressed in the literature (see, for instance, the recent papers [1], [2] and references therein). Generally speaking, main approaches can be divided into two categories: centralized and decentralized.