Two strategies of two-level facility network design for autonomous ground vehicle operations

We compare two models of two-level facility location problems for network design in autonomous ground vehicle (AGV) operations. The two-level model consists of locations for charging stations (main facilities), as well as for storage locations (substations). Demand points will represent processing locations. In both formulations, demands are assigned to substations and substations are assigned to main facilities. The formulations differ in whether each connection between a facility and a substation is counted once in absolute terms, or once per demand. These represent two different views, in which transfer between a main facility and substation is carried out either in bulk, e.g. using a shuttle, or by each AGV independently. Selected experimental results are presented for geometric networks and networks consisting of uniformly distributed points on a regular mesh. These results indicate that the two formulations lead to vastly different network designs in terms of the number of facilities and connectivity.