Glossary · System coordination, integration and orchestration
Fleet coordination
Also known as: fleet management, multi-robot coordination
German: Flottenkoordination
In intralogistics and robotics, fleet coordination is the central or distributed coordination of several mobile robots or vehicles, such as AGVs and AMRs, including task assignment, route planning, traffic control at shared areas and charging management.
- System integration
In one sentence
Fleet coordination assigns tasks, plans routes and controls traffic and charging for a group of mobile robots or automated vehicles.
Example
The fleet manager assigns the next pallet transport to the nearest free AMR, reserves its path through the narrow aisle and sends another AMR to charge.
How it applies
- Engineering: Mixed fleets from several vendors need a common interface for orders and status; VDA 5050 is one such interface for AGVs. Define priorities, deadlock handling and behavior when the fleet manager is unreachable.
- Safety: Fleet coordination optimizes traffic. Protection of people relies on each vehicle's own safety functions and on the risk assessment of the operating area, not on the fleet manager.
- Documentation: Operating documentation should explain traffic rules, how to take a vehicle out of the fleet for maintenance and how to recover after a blockage. Site layout documents need to stay consistent with the map used by the fleet manager.
Fleet coordination vs. job scheduling
Job scheduling decides which jobs are done when. Fleet coordination decides which vehicle executes a transport job and how vehicles move without conflicts.