• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.31 no.7
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• pp.605-611
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• 2007

In order to become a mega hub port, major ports all over the world are making every effort to enhance their productivity through efficiency of internal operation. Accordingly, in order to enhance the competitiveness of a container terminal, an automated container terminal is considered as the best alternative. An automated container terminal is using such automated handling equipment as AGV(Automated Guided Vehicles) and ATC(Automated Transfer Crane). The efficient equipment operation plays a critical role in enhancing the productivity of an automated container terminal. In an automated container terminal, the most important equipments are AGV and ATC. Each block of containers with a vertical layout is generally operating two ATCs. The two ATCs can be crossed or not at each block. In the case of operating crossover ATC, it has an advantage of high flexibility that ATC work is possible at both TP(Transfer Point) of each block. But it has also a disadvantage that the yard has to be operated at a low storage level of containers in the terminal yard. Recently, for automated container terminals, which are being prepared for opening in Korea, they plan to use uncrossed twin ATC in order to make the storage level of their yards high at a low cost. Therefore, studies have to be made in order to increase the efficiency of twin ATC system based on the flexibility that the crossover ATC system has. This research aims to suggest an operation strategy to improve efficiency of twin ATC at each storage block in a yard.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
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• 2004.04a
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• pp.459-464
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• 2004

In this paper, an autonomous navigation system for autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs) operated in an automated container terminal is designed. The navigation system is based on the sensors detecting the range and bearing. The navigation algorithm used is an interacting multiple model (IMM) algorithm to detect other AGVs and avoid other obstacles using informations obtained from multiple sensors. As models to detect other AGVs (or obstacles), two kinematic models are derived： Constant velocity model for linear motion and constant speed turn model for curvilinear motion. For constant speed turn model, an unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is used because of drawbacks of the extended Kalman filter (EKF) in nonlinear system. The suggested algorithm reduces the root mean squares error for linear motions, while it can rapidly detect possible turning motions.

• Journal of KIISE
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• v.42 no.10
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• pp.1231-1238
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• 2015

Traffic light rules are one among the most common and important safety rules as the directly correlate with the safety of pedestrians. Consequently, an algorithm is required to cause an automated (or semi-automated) vehicle to observe traffic light signals. We present a novel, artificial potential function to guide an automated vehicle through traffic lights. Our function consists of three potential function components representing the three traffic light colors: green, yellow, and red. The traffic light potential function smoothly changes an artificial potential field using the elapsed time for the current light and light conversion. Our traffic light potential function is combined with other potential functions to guide vehicles' movement and constructs the final artificial potential field. Using various simulations, we found or method successfully guided the vehicle to observe traffic lights while behaving like human-controlled cars.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.10 no.12
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• pp.1287-1294
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• 2004

Automated container terminals have been being developed over the world for recent years and many countries are interested in it because the amount of containers exported or imported is rapidly increasing. The conventional container terminals were not designed to control this kind of heavily many containers. They would face many structural problems soon or later, although they have managed to do well so far. One of the most important things in developing automated container terminal is to develop the equipment able to handle many containers efficiently. Those are maybe automated transfer cranes, automatic guided vehicles, and automated quay-side cranes. The word 'automated' means the equipment is operated without drivers and those equipments are able to work without any interruption in working schedule. Through the researches on the conventional transfer cranes, we decided that the structure of the conventional transfer cranes is not efficient in automated container terminal and it's not possible to handle so many containers in limited time. Therefore we have been studying on the proper structure of the automated container crane for past several years and a new type of transfer crane has been developed. Design concept and control method of a new type of transfer crane had been presented in the previous paper: Part Ⅰ. Experimental features will be presented with a model transfer crane in this paper: Part Ⅱ.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.19 no.40
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• pp.107-117
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• 1996

This paper considers the part assignment to workstations in flexible manufactuirng system (FMS). Parts are processed through several workstations according to processing order. The machines of each workstation can do multiple Processing functions. Therefore, a processing of a part can be processed in several workstations, which are non-identical in functional performance. Although a processing of a part can be processed in the multiple workstations, it has to be processed in only one among available several workstations, Parts are transported with unit load by automated guided vehicles (AGVs). The criteria of part assignment is to minimize the maximum value of the processing times of each workstation and the total transport times of vehicles. Model formulation is suggested, and numerical example is shown.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.47-57
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• 1992

The purpose of this paper is to improve the operation performance of unit-load Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV's) used as a carrier and mobile workstation in a flow-shop type flexible manufacturing system. An algorithm is developed to determine the optimal job sequence which minimizes the vehicle idle time on the line and the production makespan by the use of the entering interval and travel time between workcenters. An entering times of AGV's and the minimum number of AGV's required are calculated by optimal job sequence. When the numbe rof AGV's is limited, enterling times of AGV's are adjusted to maximize the efficient use of vehicles. A numerical example is given to illustrate the application of the algorithm.

• Journal of Korea Society of Digital Industry and Information Management
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.73-79
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• 2014

In this study, the unmanned vehicle to develop a preliminary step, we were facilities for Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) simulator is designed and implemented. Industry is increasingly the more advanced automation and management systems need to be efficient. These studies are at least 24-hour continuous unmanned vehicles and personnel can result in reduction of labor costs. In addition, safety accidents can be minimized in the industry as an effect of intelligent AGV is essential. This study is the initial step for the development of AGV. manufactured simulator to Simulation and drives the performance of the system is evaluated. The configuration of the simulator, ultrasonic sensors, infrared sensors, and using the obstacle were to follow a given path. In addition, two-way communication between the host computer and the main processor that was. communication method that IEE802.11 meets the standard is applied to high-speed wireless LAN systems, each of the sensor information is calculated. AGV having a drive shaft 4 of the four wheels are respectively independent structure. AGV's main processor is driven using a high-performance DSP, and the controller controls the steering device of the load could be significantly reduced.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.63 no.1
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• pp.132-138
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• 2014

The use of AGVs(Automated Guided Vehicles) are increasing in many factories. The most widely used AGV system is that magnetic tapes are attached on the factory floor to make guided path and an AGV equipped with a magnetic sensor follows the path by sensing magnetic flux. In this AGV system, usually a magnetic sensor is attached on the front end of an AGV to detect the guided path and the sensor generates analog voltages proportional to the magnetic flux. The problem is that the AGV in use has rather big tracking errors because the accurate orientation of the AGV can not be detected by using only one magnetic sensor. In this paper, we propose a method to minimize the path tracking errors. In our method, one additional sensor is attached on the rear end of the AGV to estimate the orientation of the AGV and to control more accurately the AGV according to the estimated orientation of the AGV. We performed several experiments and the results successfully show the feasibility of the proposed method.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.91-103
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• 2008

In order to simulate the behavior of automated manufacturing systems, the performance of material handling systems should be measured dynamically. Multi-Agent technology could be well adapted for the development of simulator for distributed and intelligent manufacture systems. A multi-agent system is composed of one coordination agent and multiple application agents. Issues in AGVS simulator can be classified by the set-up and operating problems. Decisions on the number of vehicles, bi- or uni-directional guide-path, etc. are fallen into the set-up problem category, while deadlock tree algorithm and conflict resolution are in operating problem. In this paper, a multi-agent based deadlock-free simulator for automated guided vehicle system(AGVS) are proposed through the use of multi-agent technologies and the development of deadlock-free algorithm. In this AGVS simulator proposed, well-known Floyd algorithm is used to create AGVS Guide path, through which AGVS move. Also, AGVs avoid vehicle conflict and deadlock using check path algorithm. And Moving vehicle agents are operated in real-time control by coordination agent. AGV position is dynamically calculated based on the concept of rolling time horizon. Simulator receives and presents operating information of vehicle in AGVS Gaunt chart. The performance of the proposed algorithm and developed simulator based on multi-agent are validated through set of experiments.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.8 no.9
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• pp.795-802
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• 2002

We present a new dynamic routing scheme for multiple autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs) systems. There have been so many results concerned with scheduling and routing of multiple AGV systems; however, most of them are only applicable to systems with a small number of AGVs under a low degree of concurrency. With an increased number of AGVs in recent applications, these AGV systems are faced with another problem that has never been occurred in a system with a small number AGVs. This is the stop propagation problem. That is, if a leading AGV stops then all the following AGVs must stop to avoid any collision. In order to resolve this problem, we propose a nonstop preferential detour (NPD) algorithm which is a new dynamic routing scheme employing an election algorithm. For real time computation, we introduce two stage control scheme and propose a new path searching scheme, k-via shortest path scheme for an efficient dynamic routing algorithm. Finally, the proposed new dynamic routing scheme is illustrated by an example.