Distributed control of multi-AGV system based on regional control model

With the development of logistics technology, automated guided vehicle (AGV) is playing an increasingly important role on flexible manufacturing system. It is important to discuss the behavior of traffic for the design and realization of multi-AGV system. When AGVs operate in a manufacturing plant, there will be conflicts, deadlocks and other problems; how to avoid these problems and enhance the flexibility and efficiency of multi-AGV system becomes more and more necessary. Aiming at reducing the inherent complexity of the multi-AGV problem, a new regional control model with new guide-path configuration is presented. A multi-AGV scheduling strategy based on the shortest waiting time is proposed to achieve the optimization of AGV running time, and a distributed control mechanism is developed to resolve the conflict and deadlock problem of the multi-AGV system. Finally a test bed for the multi-AGV system simulation is built and the simulation results indicate the validity and feasibility of the proposed model.