A practical model of routing problems for automated guided vehicles with acceleration and deceleration

We consider an optimization of conflict-free routing problems for automated guided vehicles (AGV) with acceleration and deceleration. A continuous time model is developed to represent the dynamics of vehicles. In the proposed model, the transportation model is discretized into several regions. A network model is created by taking into account the acceleration and deceleration motions. The acceleration and deceleration are represented at curve locations. Column generation heuristic is used to find a near-optimal solution. In this algorithm, we construct a heuristic rule to generate a feasible solution with acceleration and deceleration of vehicles after the column generation. The pricing problem is represented by a resource constrained shortest path problem, which is effectively solved by a labeling algorithm. The dominance relation for acceleration and deceleration is addressed. In the proposed model, the dynamics of real speed AGV model are reflected into the routing problems. By comparing the performance of the conventional method, the effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated.