A SEMIDYNAMIC TIME WINDOW CONSTRAINED ROUTEING STRATEGY IN AN AGV SYSTEM

This study addresses the issue of vehicle route planning in an AGV sys tem. The two salient approaches to route planning-static and dynamic-a re briefly discussed. The main thrust of the present work is developme nt and testing of a proposed semi-dynamic time window constrained rout eing strategy. Reserved time windows are placed on nodes indicating se quential crossing of nodes by the respective vehicles. Free time windo ws represent empty time slots available for vehicles to cross the node s. Similarly, time windows representing the direction of traffic flow are placed on the bidirectional arcs. Based on these time windows, Dij kstra's algorithm is applied to find the least congested fastest route s for vehicles. A simulation study of a bidirectional flow path is the n reported. The aim of the simulation experiment is to evaluate the sy stem performance under the proposed routeing strategy vis-a-vis static routeing strategy. The results show that the proposed routeing strate gy helps in reducing vehicle blocking time and improving the throughpu t potential of the system.