Non-network Type Artificial Immune System and its Application to Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) System

Abstract

This paper describes Artificial Immune-Based Control System that is applied to the automatic transportation control system of AGV (Automated Guided Vehicle) operated in a restricted area such as a container terminal and an ironworks. The authors propose the non-network type artificial immune system that is functioning in a unit level of antibodies instead of in a network of antigens and antibodies. AGVs equipped by the proposed method can avoid the collision and/or the deadlock and move autonomously from the source points to the destinations. The transportation system using AGVs has been expected because AGVs have the flexibility and efficiency. However the control system for AGVs is so flexible that the design has a big margin. Especially, the design for the control system is a hard work when the number of AGV becomes to be large. Only a few study of this problem is found in a past references. This paper focuses on the automatic transportation plan of AGVs in a real time scheduling using the non-network type artificial immune system. The comparison of the proposed method: the non-network type artificial immune system and the network type artificial immune system are also discussed and the computer simulation verifies the effectiveness of the proposed method.