A Distributed Conflict-Free Task Allocation Method for Multi-AGV Systems

In the era of Industry 4.0, as the main force of intelligent logistics systems, multi-Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) systems have developed rapidly. At present, multi-AGV systems are a research hotspot, where task allocation as a key technology is being paid much attention. In this study, a new task allocation scheme for multi-AGV systems is proposed based on a distributed framework. The AGVs can autonomously select tasks, plan paths, and communicate with its neighbors to ensure that all tasks are completed at a low cost and conflicts are avoided. While ensuring total connectivity, the proposed method can avoid the calculation pressure of task center surges when the number of AGVs increases sharply, and has the advantages of good flexibility and good real-time performance. In addition, some examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the connectivity maintainer and task allocation method.