Deadlock-free traffic control with geometrical critical sections

Traffic control of vehicles on pre-planned paths may be based on critical sections where vehicles have to control their velocity mutually in order to avoid collisions. By analysing the geometry of critical sections carefully deadlock situations can be recognised and situations where vehicles may share a critical area under certain restrictions to speed-up their passage. Deadlock-freeness can be guaranteed by applying a variant of the bankers algorithm. The traffic control strategy is applied within the ‘Mobile Autonomous Robot Twente’-project in which mobile assembly robots will drive around in a ‘factory of the future’ guided by software control.