Study on AGVs battery charging strategy for improving utilization

Abstract The battery charging strategy of automation guided vehicles (AGVs) is playing an important role in improving the utilization of AGVs. This paper proposes two dual-stage battery charging strategies of AGVs, which equip with lithium-ion battery for improving the utilization. In stage 1, two routing decisions based on heuristic algorithm are developed, namely the nearest charging station (NCS) and the minimum delay charging station (MDCS); while in stage 2, the duration of each charging occurrence is reduced considering the charging characteristic of lithium-ion battery. A real case is adopted to illustrate the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed approach.