Decentralized and dynamic routing for a Cognitive Conveyor

Today´s logistic industry faces the challenge of short product life cycles and small batch sizes. Technical solutions that provide enormous flexibility are therefore needed to meet the customer´s needs. The Cognitive Conveyor provides this flexibility for tomorrow´s logistics. Small-scaled, multidirectional conveyor modules are coupled to a network. This network implements a distributed decisionmaking process and solves transportation tasks efficiently without a central control. Moreover, the system adjusts to changing load situations autonomously. To move a transport unit, multiple modules form groups, which act synchronously and target-oriented. To prevent deadlocks, routes are reserved before a transport unit is moved on the conveyor. This paper addresses the group forming and presents the routing algorithm for transport units on the Cognitive Conveyor. Afterwards, this paper briefly describes the current work regarding deadlock prevention.