Decentralized control of autonomous guided vehicles scalable warehouse systems

In an R&D project with both the AgentWise/DistriNet research group and Egemin N.V., the feasibility of an innovative, decentralized solution for managing and controlling warehouse management using automated guided vehicles, called E´GVs is investigated. The study is triggered by new and future system requirements such as scalability and flexibility. We exploit principles and mechanisms known from situated multi-agent systems for modelling and implementing a decentralized control system. We aim to provide the E´GVs with a considerable amount of autonomy. Besides a scalable solution, 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 EOVs 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 the control of the E´GV system. The implementation of the control software is in C#, which seamlessly integrates with E´nsor, the low-level vehicle control system.