Abstract
In this paper it is tried to present the methodology of design, implementation, experimentation and validation used in the development of an autonomous guided vehicle (AGV) network simulator. This work arises in the context of the design of AGVs networks. The optimal solution of the problems associated to the management of an AGVs network is very heavy computationally. In common practice are used heuristics that don't guarantee the optimal solution. The main motivation of this work was to find an answer to the question: Given an AGVs network, a computational power and a criteria of evaluation of the performance, which are the scheduling heuristic and the length of the list of tasks that give the best performance?
The answer to this question was found through the simulation of four Scheduling Heuristics over the same AGVs Network-FIFO, Closer First, Closer First with Timeouts and Mixed. FIFO had the best fit with radio-taxi data. To implement these scheduling heuristics it was developed a Simulator of AGVs Networks over the package PC-Model. The results obtained were validated through the comparison of the simulation results with the data acquired in a radio-taxis central. This comparison is legitimated by the existence of an quasi-isomorphic relationship between some aspects of an AGVs Network and some characteristics of a radio-taxis network. The area of validation of simulators is an area where there are not standard techniques and where research development is needed. By the validation of a simulator It is meant the estimation of its confidence degree. The confidence degree of a simulator is defined as the probability of making a correct decision in consequence of the use of the simulator. The formulation of the validation problem is made through hypothesis testing. The confidence degree of a simulator is expressed in terms of the probabilities of type I and II errors. Given the limitations of some of statistical tests, the validation of a simulator included the application of tests similar to the Turing tests. A radio-taxis network proved to provide a satisfactory model validation for an AGVs network using a set of indicator variables.
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da Fonseca, J.B. (1996). Validation of a model of an AGVs scheduling heuristic using radio-taxi data. In: Pichler, F., Díaz, R.M., Albrecht, R. (eds) Computer Aided Systems Theory — EUROCAST '95. EUROCAST 1995. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1030. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0034785
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