Mission design for a group of autonomous guided vehicles

In this paper, a generic approach for the integration of vehicle routing and scheduling and motion planning for a group of autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs) is proposed. The AGVs are requested to serve all the work stations in a two-dimensional environment while taking into account kinematics constraints and the environment’s geometry during their motion. The problem objective is the simultaneous determination of time-optimum and collision-free paths for all AGVs. The proposed method is investigated and discussed through a number of simulated experiments using a variety of environments and different initial conditions.

Research highlights► Vehicle routing, scheduling and motion planning for a group of AGVs is considered as one integrated problem. ► The AGVs serve all the work stations in a 2D environment without any former assignment. ► Time-optimum and collision-free paths are determined for all AGVs. ► The overall problem is formulated as a non-linear constrained optimization problem. ► A special GA is developed to resolve the overall problem.