A novel hierarchical charging algorithm for the AGV dispatching problem in a multi-robot system

Abstract

Charging problem for the AGVs (automated guided vehicles) in a multi-robot system based on a real-world intelligent warehouse aims to maximize the transportation efficiency of AGVs considering the charging process. For this purpose, a hierarchical charging algorithm is presented by taking into account both the continuity of transportation and the charging efficiency. A multi-level threshold scheme is designed to reduce the impact of the charging process on AGV scheduling. The numerical experiment results indicate that at the same charging rate, the number of completed tasks by AGVs can be increased from 18 to 28 an hour compared with traditional charging algorithm thus the efficiency can be improved from 34.62% to 51.86% correspondingly, which shows the superior performance of the presented algorithm.