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.