Vehicles fleet communications in data infrastructure unavailability situations

Abstract

The paper describes a solution for operating a fleet of AGVs or AMRs, when an appropriate communication infrastructure is not available, by using messages send from one vehicle to another. All vehicles are equipped with two-way radios and a server (fixed or placed on one vehicle) is managing the network messages and is storing the data about the position of each vehicle. A set of rules was defined for message management and the messages format was defined in detail. It was also defined an algorithm, running on the server, for defining the chain of vehicles to be used for sending one message in the network and for updating the data about the vehicles’ network structure. It was developed and tested the software to be implemented in the radio communication modules for managing the messages flow. Tests were performed for assessing the coverage area in a real environment and the results, proving the correct software implementation, are explained.