Optimized networking of cooperating vehicle swarms

A constantly increasing number of product variants, shorter product life cycles and ever faster changing factories are increasing the demands on intralogistics. This is accompanied by the need for ever more efficient transport logistics with high flexibility and scalability of the transport systems used.

New concepts rely on swarms of automated guided vehicles (AGVs). However, complexity and flexibility also increase the cost of wireless communication, as this is ultimately required for the coordination, interaction and collaboration of mobile participants. In practice, communication problems such as limited data throughput, data loss or delayed data are already occurring today. This has a negative impact on the expected logistics performance. If the number of participants is increased in the future, there will also be major scalability problems.

The aim of the 'Orpheus' research project is to improve the performance of these control and communication processes, which should lead to more usable vehicles and more robust operation. Solutions for efficient wireless networking using network coding are to be made applicable. Furthermore, a decentralised communication structure is to be used to create a scalable system in which additional participants can be added dynamically without negatively affecting the logistics performance of the system.

The potential of decentralised swarm communication is to be demonstrated in 'Orpheus' using existing radio standards and network protocols. The results in the form of supplementary software components can subsequently be integrated by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and utilised with existing radio and processor hardware in existing installations and products.

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