TITLE:
Controllers Design for the Multi-Shuttle and Multi-Station Transportation System
AUTHORS:
Tien Dong Ha, Minh Tien Trinh, Tran Thanh Cong Vu, Tuong Quan Vo
KEYWORDS:
Multi-Station, Multi-Shuttle, Transportation, Shuttle, Calling, RFID, Communicating, Start-Node, End-Node
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Applied Sciences,
Vol.11 No.8,
August
31,
2021
ABSTRACT: Nowadays, the Multi-Shuttle and Multi-Station
Transportation System (MMTS) is one of the most interesting research topics in
many fields of industries. It is an effective solution to reduce unexpected
accidents that occur during transportation as well as increase productivity in
manufacturing. The aim of this paper is to introduce the controller design for
the MMTS which is built in our BK-Recme BioMech Lab at Ho Chi Minh City
University of Technology (VNU-HCM), Viet Nam. Based on the design of this
system, the control algorithms will be conducted to check the operation of the
whole system. To evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of this model, we
design a series of random instances for different quantities of nodes as well
as the different quantities of shuttles. Our system includes 4 stations and 6
shuttles which are assembled in the serial chain system. However, the number of
stations and number of shuttles can be expanded to any desired ones which are
based on the requirement of the industries. In this paper, we mainly focus on
the controller design of this system to make it operate in an effective way
that the goods will be transported and delivered to the target station as fast
as possible. In order to solve the large-scale
instances and realistic transport problems,
we propose three algorithms for three progresses as shuttles calling,
path reading and shuttles communicating. The shuttles calling is to decide
which shuttle should be called to the start-node. Path reading to determine the shortest way to go from start-node to end-node.
Finally, shuttles communicating, which allow one shuttle to interact
with the next shuttles so we have a loop of orders (shuttle 1 to shuttle 2;
shuttle 2 to shuttle 3; etc.; shuttle n-1 to shuttle n). This proposes solution can help us to solve
the huge numbers of shuttles and stations in
the system. The specific result of this study is applying Dijkstra’s
algorithm to propose an algorithm that allows handling a transportation system
without caring about the number of shuttles as well as the number of stations
for the closed-loop path. Several test problems are carried out in order to
check the feasibility and the effectiveness of our purposed control algorithm.