AGVs Route Planning Based on Region-Segmentation Dynamic Programming in Smart Road Network Systems

Abstract

In this paper, a route-planning approach is proposed based on the region-segmentation Dynamic Programming (DP) algorithm for Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) in large Smart Road Network Systems (SRNSs) to deal with the problem of low route computation efficiency of the classical DP algorithm. We introduced an improved Markov Decision Process (MDP) to describe SRNSs, in which the SRNSs are divided into several regions according to the AGVs’ start nodes and their goal nodes to improve the route-planning efficiency. Moreover, the route with the minimum number of turns is selected to reduce the system running time and energy cost in the following way: first, all the equidistant shortest routes are acquired from the AGVs’ start nodes to their goal nodes using the improved DP algorithm; then, the routes are screened by calculating the angular deviation between all feasible routes and AGVs’ initial directions, and the route with the fewest number of turns is taken as the shortest-time route. The simulation results verified that the proposed method can effectively solve the route-planning problem of AGVs in current SRNSs.