DISTRIBUTED SYSTEM-LEVEL CONTROL OF VEHICLES IN A HIGH-PERFORMANCE MATERIAL TRANSFER SYSTEM

In this paper, a fully-distributed system-level control architecture i s described for dispatching, routing, and collision avoidance of multi ple passive vehicles moving in a guideway network formed by a multitud e of propulsion units, Propulsion units cooperate using a communicatio n network with a topology identical to that of the guideway network, e liminating the need for explicit knowledge of global topography and en abling rapid real-time response to service requests using a parallel, shortest-route algorithm. The concepts developed are applied to a high -performance system in which vehicles respond to spontaneous requests to transfer material from point to point in manufacturing facilities i n seconds rather than the minutes required in conventional AGV and con veyor systems, In this application, the vehicle and propulsion-unit le ngths are on the same order of magnitude, the propulsion-unit-length/m aximum-vehicle-velocity time characteristic Is small, and the ratio of the number of propulsion units to the number of vehicles Is large.