A Coordination Technique for Automatic Guided Vehicles in an Industrial Application

In this paper we propose a methodology for coordinating a group of mobile robots following predefined paths in a dynamic industrial environment. Coordination diagrams are used for representing the possible collisions among the robots. Exploiting the structure of the industrial application we are dealing with, we propose an algorithm for efficiently composing the coordination diagram. Furthermore, we classify the possible collisions that can take place and the induced geometry of the resulting coordination diagram. Finally, we exploit this information for developing a planning algorithm that allows to coordinate the robots and to take into account unexpected events that can occur in an industrial environment.