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