Autonomous cruise control of circulating multi-robot for congestion

This paper describes a methodology regarding an autonomous cruise control (ACC) of circulating multi-robot which is directly effective for solving the congestion regardless of the presence of a bottleneck. For this purpose, we focus on an external interaction force between the robots. This force is generated with the use of a virtual damper. In this methodology, two control scenarios are presented: a damping force acts on a moving robot as the external interaction force, (I) only when its preceding robot(s) is/are stopping or being congested and (II) when a robot exists in front of the moving robot, in order not to become involved in the congestion. This paper deals with a circuit and a robotic manufacturing-transportation system for industrial automation. Through simulation experiments, it is shown that the proposed ACC successfully solves the congestion, and finally, improves the throughput. In addition, the superiority of the two control scenarios, ACCs (I) and (II), is discussed.