Deadlock prevention for automated guided vehicles in automated container terminals

Automated guided vehicles (AGVs) are an important component for automating container terminals. When utilizing AGVs to transport containers from one position to another in a container terminal, deadlocks are a serious problem that must be solved before real operations can take place. This study assumes that the traveling area for AGVs is divided into a large number of grid-blocks, and, as a method of traffic control, grid-blocks are reserved in advance when AGVs are running. The first purpose of the reservation is to make room between AGVs and to prevent deadlocks. The objective of this study is to develop an efficient deadlock prediction and prevention algorithm for AGV systems in automated container terminals. Because the size of an AGV is much larger than the size of a grid-block on a guide path, this study assumes that an AGV may occupy more than one grid-block at a time. This study proposes a method for reserving grid-blocks in advance to prevent deadlocks. A graphical representation method is suggested for a reservation schedule and a priority table is suggested to maintain priority consistency among grid-blocks. It is shown that the priority consistency guarantees deadlock-free reservation schedules for AGVs to cross the same area at the same time. The proposed method was tested in a simulation study.