Autonomous conveyance control of AGV based on knowledge of taxi transportation rules

摘要

Recently, demand has been increasing for various kinds and volumes of manufacturing systems. Also, the importance of the Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) is increasing because it can flexibly correspond to the change of equipment in a factory. This paper describes an autonomous conveyance system for AGV based on a taxi transportation strategy. The system focuses on knowledge of a flexible taxi system in traffic engineering. A taxi is a transport unit in a traffic system with higher flexibility in traveling routes and arrival/departure points compared with railways and buses. In the present report, the waiting mode of a taxi is applied as an AGV rule and investigated to verify the effect of the proposed system. Moreover, the effect of multi-loaded AGV on system performance such as matching time and conveyance efficiency is investigated. A numerical experiment has been conducted to evaluate them. As a result, it was found that introduction of multi-loaded AGV is effective at reducing matching time without conveyance efficiency decrease.