Computation of Minimum Number of Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) with Battery Charging

Abstract

The research contributes to the study of the automated guided vehicle (AGV) utilisation, specifically the number of AGVs involved with different industrial time intervals. Computation of the number of AGVs depends upon the assigned tasks of different time intervals such as loaded and unloaded travel times, loading, and unloading times, return travel, and the completion period. There has been an effort to manage the current research gap in existing studies and help the industry sector to estimate the minimum number of AGVs. Modernisation left an impact on the industry too; this research offers additional knowledge toward the manufacturing sector, particularly how automated guided vehicles can easily deploy with minimum effort, as they are flexible and easily can move on a variety on paths. This research study describes an algorithm for AGV formulation based on the transport time factors, to perform different jobs in any industry. The current COVID pandemic also highlights the importance of robots and digitalisation to compete with such disasters, little effort has been devoted to computing with agent-based simulation, to compare the finding with calculated values. We address the difficulties and demonstrate how many AGVs are required to meet the industry requirement.