We formulate an optimization problem to control a large number of automated
guided vehicles in a plant without collision. The formulation consists of
binary variables. A quadratic cost function over these variables enables us to
utilize certain solvers on digital computers and recently developed
purpose-specific hardware such as D-Wave 2000Q and the Fujitsu digital
annealer. In the present study, we consider an actual plant in Japan, in which
vehicles run, and assess efficiency of our formulation for optimizing the
vehicles via several solvers. We confirm that our formulation can be a powerful
approach for performing smooth control while avoiding collisions between
vehicles, as compared to a conventional method. In addition, comparative
experiments performed using several solvers reveal that D-Wave 2000Q can be
useful as a rapid solver for generating a plan for controlling the vehicles in
a short time although it deals only with a small number of vehicles, while a
digital computer can rapidly solve the corresponding optimization problem even
with a large number of binary variables.

本文研究了如何利用 D-Wave 2000Q 和 Fujitsu 数字退火器等硬件设备，通过二元变量的二次成本函数实现工厂内大量自动引导车的平滑控制和碰撞避免优化问题，结果表明该方法相较于传统方法更加高效，并且 D-Wave 2000Q 可以在较短的时间内处理控制小规模车辆的优化规划，而数字计算机则可处理更大规模的车辆优化问题。