Resource-Oriented Petri Nets in Deadlock Avoidance of AGV Systems

This paper presents a colored resourceoriented Petri net (CROPN) modeling method to deal with conflict and deadlock arising in Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV) systems. The work can be viewed as the continuation of some of the authors’ previous work. Some unique features in AGV systems require the further investigation into their deadlock avoidance using CROPN models. The proposed approach can easily handle both bidirectional and unidirectional paths. Bidirectional paths offer additional flexibility, efficiency and less cost than unidirectional paths. Yet they exhibit more challenging AGV management problems. By modeling nodes with places and lanes with transitions, one can easily construct a CROPN model for dynamic AGV systems with changing routes. A control policy suitable for real-time control implementation is then proposed.