Shortest routing of bidirectional automated guided vehicles avoiding deadlock and blocking

It is a great challenge to effectively manage automated manufacturing systems in which automated guided vehicles (AGVs) are adopted to handle materials, because of such features as prior unknown AGV requests and changing AGV initial positions. This paper aims to find the shortest time routes, while both deadlock and blocking in AGV systems are avoided. It first finds the shortest routes based on a guide path layout, and then performs rerouting, whenever necessary, to avoid deadlock and blocking according to a deadlock avoidance policy, previously developed by the authors. The proposed approach can offer better solutions than existing methods. For some cases, it can find a solution, while the existing ones cannot.