Exploring the Impact of Battery Charge Reduction Rate and the Placement of Chargers on AGV Operation

This paper presents a simulation model to study the effect of the battery charging rate of Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) on the overall output of a toy car production environment. This paper uses Modular Petri Nets for modeling and the General Petri Net Simulator (GPenSIM) for model implementation on MATLAB and simulation. The main focus of this paper is to analyze the operational efficiency of AGVs under varying conditions, such as the impact of battery charge reduction rates and the strategic placement of Charging Stations within the production line. By employing Modular Petri Nets implemented with GPenSIM, this paper presents a detailed model that captures the dynamics (movements and interactions) of AGVs in a simulated manufacturing environment. The model is also extensible, as newer functionalities can be added to it as Petri Modules. This paper specifically focuses on two critical operational parameters: (a) the number of AGVs and their battery charge reduction rate; (b) the number of Charging Stations. In summary, the goal, aim, and novelty of this paper is to provide a simpler yet effective model to practitioners so that they can study and experiment without needing advanced mathematical skills.