Holonic coordination and control of an automated guided vehicle system

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Liu, Shiming^a | Gruver, William A.^{a; *} | Kotak, Dilip B.^b

Affiliations: [a] Intelligent Robotics and Manufacturing Systems Laboratory, School of Engineering Science, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada V5A 1S6 | [b] Manufacturing Systems Engineering Group, Innovation Centre – Vancouver, National Research Council, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1W5

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 604 291 4339; Fax: +1 604 291 4951; E-mail: gruver@cs.sfu.ca.

Abstract: Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) systems typically utilize a central controller to assign transportation tasks among vehicles. Because of their rigidity, centralized architectures are not suitable for modern manufacturing with its rapidly changing markets, demands for products with higher quality, smaller batch sizes, customer specifications, and shorter delivery times. This research applies concepts from Holonic Manufacturing Systems (HMS) to develop a decentralized architecture for the coordinated control of AGVs. Simulation results compare the proposed method with the traditional centralized approach.

DOI: 10.3233/ICA-2002-9304

Journal: Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 235-250, 2002