INVESTIGATION OF THE EFFECTS OF CONTROL LOGIC ON AGV SYSTEM PERFORMANCE

An Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) system consists of AGV units, physical system layout (guidepath and work cells), and control logic. AGV system control logic is employed to deal with traffic management problems, AGV task assignments, and resource selection and can significantly impact overall AGV system performance. Control logic can fall into four major categories, namely, AGV dispatching rules, AGV selection rules, track intersection control rules, and staging area selection rules.

This research uses simulation to investigate the effects of combinations of control rules on the overall performance, particularly unit load throughput, of an AGV-based FMS. The domain of the investigation is restricted to an AGV-based job shop type manufacturing environment. The physical system layout and part processing routes are fixed and the AGVs are considered to have battery charging. The simulation task was accomplished through an object-oriented simulation environment specifically developed for the generation of simulation models of AGV-based manufacturing systems. The conclusions of this research discuss system performance and the effects of the control rules. An optimal combination of control rules for the specific system investigated is chosen. The advantages of using object-oriented simulation to create alternative simulation models is also briefly discussed.