Automated Guided Vehicles - A Review on Applications, Problem Modeling and Solutions

In the past few decades, many research pieces were devoted to Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs), both in hardware and software technology. Nowadays, these are popular for the automatic handling of materials, goods, and containers. They provide more efficient and flexible solutions for manufacturing and transportation systems. This paper does a survey on Automated Guided Vehicles in the real world, in port automation for automatic container handling and manufacturing systems for flexible material handling systems. The results of this survey reveal several corollaries over usage, modeling of problems, and solutions. Moreover, it presents several challenges for future research. The first challenge is to perform a simulation model that can handle multiple layouts in both container terminals and manufacturing systems. The second challenge is to work on the new technology of AGVs, which involves Industry 4.0. The third challenge is concerned with some dynamic vehicle routing strategies based on a two-tiered simulation. The fourth challenge is to develop more efficient algorithms for various problems of routing AGVs in practical applications.