Automatic Guided Vehicles System and Its Coordination Control for Containers Terminal Logistics Application

Automatic Guided Vehicle (AGV) has been widely applied in automatic logistics system because it provides flexibility and efficiency. This paper addresses review and design of multi AGVs system (MAGS) and its coordination control to be implemented at containers terminal logistics systems. It focuses on design of electric AGV and supervisory control to coordinate multi AGVs. Firstly, related previous works by other researchers are reviewed including containers terminal system, application of AGV in logistics systems and multi mobile robots control systems. Secondly, application of AGV system in containers terminal is proposed including AGV design specification, AGV control method, multi AGV system supervisory control method, and containers terminal port model. Conclusions have been obtained as follows: an electric AGV may be developed using electric motors with total power between 700-900KW and speed of 228 rpm; a MAGVS is proposed based on free ranging navigation system using GPS, digital compass and rotary encoder sensors; path planning, coordination and traffic management control is conducted by the supervisory controller based on priority based coordinative (PBC) control algorithm; a model of MAGVS for containers terminal logistics system can be developed using the navigation system and PBC control algorithm.