Automated guided vehicles are used to transport components from the warehouse to the assembly hall or semi-finished products from one workstation to the next, following predefined paths. The planning of such roadmaps is still a very time-consuming and extensive manual process, since automatically generated roadmaps are not applicable yet. Very often, roadmaps criss-cross the whole factory, bearing the risk of jams and collisions.
To generate applicable roadmaps automatically, Sarah Uttendorf of the Institut für Integrierte Produktion Hannover gGmbH (IPH) enhanced conventional path finding algorithms with the so-called Fuzzy inference system. She presented her research results at the IEEE International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management (IEEM). Her conference paper, entitled “A Fuzzy Logic Expert System for the Automated Generation of Roadmaps for Automated Guided Vehicle Systems“ received the Best Conference Paper Award.
