Multi-AGV systems in shared industrial environments: Advanced sensing and control techniques for enhanced safety and improved efficiency

This chapter describes innovative sensing technologies and control techniques that aim at improving the performance of groups of automated guided vehicles (AGVs) used for logistics operations in industrial environments. We explicitly consider the situation where the environment is shared among AGVs, manually driven vehicles, and human operators. In this situation, safety is a major issue that needs always to be guaranteed, while still maximizing the efficiency of the system. This paper describes some of the main achievements of the PAN-Robots European project.