Simulation-Based Evaluation Of Reservation Mechanisms For The Time Window Routing Method

Abstract

Automated warehouses operated by a fleet of robots offer great flexibility, since fleet size can be adjusted easily to throughput requirements.Furthermore, they provide higher redundancy compared to common solutions for automated storage and retrieval systems.On the other hand, these systems require more complex control strategies to run robustly and efficiently.Special routing and deadlock handling strategies are necessary to avoid blocking and collisions among the robots.In this contribution, we focus on the time window routing method, an approach for avoiding deadlocks by reserving routes in advance.We present and discuss different reservation mechanisms that are evaluated by the means of simulation.