Risk Related to AGV Systems—Open-Access Literature Review

Abstract

AGV systems are considered a necessary element of the recently created cyber-physical systems whose task is to support material flows in intelligent factories. The implementation of AGV systems in cyber-physical systems generates new types of threats, and the level of risk of adverse events related to the operation of these systems is changing. This article aims to present the results of an open-access literature review, the purpose of which was to identify issues addressed in studies of the analysis and risk management of AGV systems, to group publications according to the proposed topical framework, and to identify gaps in the current research. We used the PRISMA concept to review the literature. After completing all stages of the procedure, 153 publications on risk in AGV systems were selected for analysis. To ensure the high quality of the analysis, access to the full texts of the selected documents was necessary. For this reason, we have limited the collection to open-access publications. The results of the analysis allowed us to distinguish 12 primary categories and 26 additional subcategories within the literature. These categories are characterized by different numbers of publications and cover different AGV systems operation areas. The simultaneous assignment of documents to several subcategories indicates the need for a holistic view of issues related to the risk of AGV operation in operating environments with varying degrees of automation. An essential scientific contribution of our analysis is the identification of a research gap. The analyzed publications lacked studies on methods of risk identification and assessment that take into account the specificity of AGV operation, especially in the cyber-physical systems of Logistics 4.0.