Random Search for Dispatch and Conflict-Free Routing Problem of Capacitated AGV Systems

In the case of routing problems of real AGV systems, some matters should be considered such as collision avoidance, capacity of system components, ease of changing routes and robustness against disturbance. In recent years, some researches on the dispatch and conflict-free routing problem have been performed, however, to the best of our knowledge, there exists no research on the dispatch and conflict-free routing problem of capacitated AGV systems(DCFRPC). In the DCFRPC, the capacity of each AGV and buffer is a fixed and finite number, and conflict-free routing must be achieved. This paper proposes a formulation of the DCFRPC and a random search method. This paper also evaluates the proposed method by computational experiments.