Decentralized control of E'GV transportation systems

Egemin N. V. is a Belgian manufacturer of Automatic Guided Vehicles -named E'GVs- and control software for automating logistics services in warehouses and manufactories using E'GVs. In a joint R&D project, Egemin and the AgentWise research group are developing an innovative version of the E'GVs control system aimed to cope with new and future system requirements such as flexibility and openness.In this project, we exploit principles and mechanisms known from situated multi-agent systems for modelling and implementing a decentralized control system. Instead of a centralistic approach, where one computer system is in charge of numerous complex and time-consuming tasks (such as routing, collision avoidance, deadlock avoidance, etc.), we aim to provide the E'GVs with a considerable amount of autonomy. This allows to obtain a system that is far more flexible than the current software - the E'GVs adapt themselves to the current situation in their direct vicinity, order assignment is dynamic, the system can cope with E'GVs leaving the system (e.g. for maintenance) or adding new E'GVs, and so on.In this paper, we describe the architecture that is employed for implementing the control of the E'GV system. The implementation of the control software seamlessly integrates with E'nsor, the low-level vehicle control system. We illustrate a concrete control scenario in which two E'GVs coordinate their behavior to avoid collisions.