Optimality Criteria for the Path Planning of Autonomous Industrial Vehicles

The trajectories planning problem for autonomous industrial vehicles requires facing significant issues concerning the efficiency and the safety of the plant. The solution of such issues is complicated by the necessity of generating paths and time-laws in different moments: plant layouts must be designed a priori, while velocity profiles must be generated in real time in order to manage variable operating conditions and safety concerns. One possible solution to the real-time velocity planning problem has been recently proposed in the framework of the European project ECHORD++. The study in this work will conversely focus on the path planning problem. More precisely, the proposed investigation aims to establish the most appropriate offline path planning criterion to be used for the design of autonomous warehouses, in order to improve the plant performances. The goal is to obtain curves which allow swift direction changes which minimally impact on the system efficiency.