A review of design and control of automated guided vehicle systems

This paper presents a review on design and control of automated guided vehicle systems. We address most key related issues including guide-path design, determining vehicle requirements, vehicle scheduling, idle-vehicle positioning, battery management, vehicle routing and deadlock resolution. We discuss and classify important models and results from key publications in literature, including often-neglected areas, such as idle-vehicle positioning and battery management. In addition, we propose a new dispatching-rule classification, a framework for design and control of automated guided vehicle systems, and suggest some fruitful research directions. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.