No More Deadlocks - Applying The Time Window Routing Method To Shuttle Systems

Autonomous vehicle-based storage and retrieval systems are used in order to supply picking or production areas based on the goods-to-person principle. In one such system, several vehicles move within the same rail system. Hence, routing and deadlock handling is an important issue that has to be resolved carefully to run these systems efficiently and robustly. One possibility for coping with deadlocks is deadlock avoidance by routing with time windows. In this paper, we present a modelling approach that allows us to apply the time window routing method to shuttle systems. We model the system as a mixed graph and present a concept for moving vehicles safely and efficiently through the storage system.