A rules and communication based multiple robots transportation system

Abstract

This paper describes a multiple mobile robot system, called decentralized robot transportation system. A decentralized approach is proposed to control and manage a fleet of autonomous guided vehicles (AGV) for transportation in a structured environment, such as transshipment tasks in harbors and airports, or goods delivery in factory floor. Each individual robot has a two level path planning capability: autonomous and coordination behaviors. A distinguished feature of our approach is to use communication based coordination rules for traffic control. A demonstration system has been built. Numerous testing results have shown the effectiveness of our approach.