Patent ID: 8019468

Claim:
A transport system for transporting articles between a plurality of processing devices by a plurality of auto-guided transport vehicles, the system comprising: buffers in a plurality of positions along a traveling route of the auto-guided transport vehicles for temporarily storing the articles, transport instruction issuing means for issuing two kind of transport instructions: (i) “From” instructions corresponding to transportation instructions from transport source processing devices to stopover buffers, and (ii) “To” instructions corresponding to transportation instructions from the stopover buffers to transport destination processing devices, the “To” instructions having designated arrival times at the transport destination processing devices and being input from outside the transport system, allocation means for allocating the transport instructions to the auto-guided transport vehicles, estimating means for estimating times and positions at which the auto-guided transport vehicles will become empty (i) at the stopover buffers after performing the “From” instructions, and (ii) at the transport destination processing devices after performing the “To” instructions, predicting means for predicting the times and the positions at which the transport instructions will be issued in the future, based on at least the “To” instructions, and auto-guided vehicle allocating means for running empty auto-guided transport vehicles, based on the times and positions estimated by the estimating means at which the auto-guided transport vehicles will become empty, and for allocating the empty auto-guided transport vehicles to be transported based on instructions that will be issued in the future, in accordance with the times and the positions predicted by the predicting means at which the transport instructions will be issued in the future.