Physical Context-Aware Communication Control Method for Efficient AGV Operation

Abstract

Automated guided vehicles (AGVs) have recently been introduced in the production and manufacturing industries. The efficiency, safety, and cost of AGV systems are issues to be addressed, and wireless communication will play an important role in addressing them. By using wireless communication, AGVs can avoid sudden breakings and collisions at intersections by sharing their positions beforehand even if each AGV does not have additional sensors. However, the lack of radio resources can cause transmission delay, which can cause AGV collisions or traffic jams. We propose a physical context-aware communication control method for collision-free and smooth AGV operation. The proposed method predicts possible AGV collisions and optimizes status report intervals for AGVs. The evaluation results indicate that a 1.5 times increase in work efficiency and 1.6 times larger AGV capacity can be achieved with the proposed method than with a conventional periodical reporting method.