Comparison of Deadlock Handling Strategies for Different Warehouse Layouts with an AGVS

Automated guided vehicles (AGVs) form a large and important part of logistic systems to improve productivity and reduce costs. When multiple AGVs are running in limited and uncertain environments, lots of issues can occur, such as collisions and deadlocks, which need to be addressed. This paper presents a flexible simulation model for a warehouse with various AGVs. We implemented all three typical strategies to handle deadlocks: prevention, avoidance and detection and resolution. The results show that there is no dominant strategy and that the results strongly depend on the individual case and the input parameters.