Multi-agent negotiation strategies utilizing heuristics for the flow of automated guided vehicles

This paper presents research that has been conducted into the utilization of heuristics to improve the performance of an agent-based Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) controller. The agent-based controller has been shown to maintain the deadlock-free flow of AGVs within a free space world model. However, the performance in terms of deliveries was lower than a comparable industrial controller. Heuristics were used to ascertain whether or not an AGV could be redirected during negotiations. Experiments were conducted using simulations and one heuristic was found to improve the performance of the agent-based controller significantly.