A Labeling Algorithm for the Navigation of Automated Guided Vehicles

Abstract

Material handling is an important component of most automated manufacturing systems. AGVs are commonly employed for this function. Efficient use of the AGV system requires proper routing and scheduling of vehicular traffic. This problem is modeled as a shortest path problem with multiple time windows on arcs and at nodes of a network. A polynomial-time labeling algorithm has been developed. The algorithm has complexity O(D2logdD), where D is the total number of time windows in the problem. The data required for the model is easy to maintain.