Approach for Scheduling Automatic Guided Vehicles Considering Equipment Failure and Power Management

Intermediate charging and sudden failure of automatic guided vehicles (AGVs) interrupt and severely affect the stability and efficiency of scheduling. Therefore, an AGV scheduling approach considering equipment failure and power management is proposed for outfitting warehouses. First, a power consumption model is established for AGVs performing transportation tasks. The powers for departure and task consumption are used to calculate the AGV charging and return times. Second, an optimization model for AGV scheduling is established to minimize the total transportation time. Different conditions are defined for the overhaul and minor repair of AGVs, and a scheduling strategy for responding to sudden failure is proposed. Finally, an algorithm is developed to solve the optimization model for a case study. The method can be used to plan the charging time and perform rescheduling under sudden failure to improve the robustness and dynamic response capability of AGVs.