AGV scheduling and routing for automated container terminals

Abstract

Routing and scheduling for Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) between the vessels and the storage yard is investigated. AGVs are constrained to move in a predefined network of roads and changing their locations over time. AGVs are continuously assigned a transportation task with a deadlines, once the previous task is completed. Given such an environment, a path planner algorithm is presented to find a collision-free and deadlock-free route in the network that takes the AGV from a given start node to a destination node in minimum time. Our scheduler selects the AGV to be planned in an appropriate order to minimize tardiness in delivering containers. The problem is solved by: (1) dynamic path planning algorithm using a space-time spanning tree, and (2) scheduler using sliding window. Algorithms for the two sub-problems are presented and experimental results of the algorithms is analyzed