Abstract: A traffic management system for an automatic material handling system (AMHS) divides time into a series of discrete time periods and analyzes a plurality of move requests that are to be executed within a particular time period is disclosed. The traffic management system receives a plurality of move requests from the AMHS and determines how many move requests are to be executed and selects which move requests in particular will be executed in the next time period. The traffic management system prioritizes the selected move requests by analyzing each source node and destination node contained in a move request in conjunction with other node traffic data. The traffic management system analyzes this data to ensure that a move request is not executed if a material transport vehicle would be dispatched to a node having a node traffic balance value that exceeds a predetermined value and a node traffic density value that exceeds a predetermined value.

Abstract: An integrated scheduler/material control system that receives a plurality of material move requests and prioritizes these move requests according to a critical pick-up time associated with each move request. Using vehicle utilization data from the traffic management system, the integrated scheduler/material control system determines the number of move requests to be deferred to a later time period and then calculates the number of move requests to be executed in the current time period. The integrated scheduler/material control system then passes the move requests and the number of move requests to be executed to the traffic management system in the prioritized order.

Abstract: A traffic management system for an automatic material handling system (AMHS) divides time into a series of discrete time periods and analyzes a plurality of move requests that are to be executed within a particular time period is disclosed. The traffic management system receives a plurality of move requests from the AMHS and determines how many move requests are to be executed and selects which move requests in particular will be executed in the next time period. The traffic management system prioritizes the selected move requests by analyzing each source node and destination node contained in a move request in conjunction with other node traffic data. The traffic management system analyzes this data to ensure that a move request is not executed if a material transport vehicle would be dispatched to a node having a node traffic balance value that exceeds a predetermined value and a node traffic density value that exceeds a predetermined value.

Abstract: A method and system is disclosed for dynamically routing a material transport vehicle using traffic based parameters. A controller directed to allocate a material transport vehicle to a particular node, selects the material transport vehicle that is physically closest to the particular node. The controller calculates an optimal route by identifying the possible routes between the initial node of the material transport vehicle and the destination node, and analyzing each of the nodes within each identified route according to a metric function by calculating a metric function value for each identified route. The controller then selects the route for the material transport vehicle having the smallest metric function value. The metric function may include parameters associated with each of the nodes in the material transport system including a node-to-node distance parameter, a node crossing parameter, and the number of material transport vehicles in a queue at each node within the route.