Multi-AGV load transport: a TSN use case

In the industry, automated guided vehicles, or AGVs, or unmanned transport vehicles, are frequently used in place of manned industrial trucks and conveyors. Transporting a cargo with many AGVs at once is not feasible with the automated logistic systems now available on the market. This means that the size of the AGV normally must grow if the size of the cargo increases. Various types, sizes, and weights of items coexist in particular workplaces. In this case, an AGV designed with a heavy payload may be wasted if, for logistical reasons, it needs to be used to transport light or medium cargo. The cooperative cargo transport would allow to make the most of the performance of each vehicle, and increase the flexibility of AGV fleets, however it requires strict synchronized communication. Thus, in this work the unit-load multi-AGV transport application is defined as a use case of time sensitive networks (TSN). Two different configurations: centralized and decentralized are explained and the requirements are identified.