Task Coordination of Automated Guided Vehicles in a Container Terminal

This paper introduces a new generation of Automated Guided Vehicles, called IPSI ® AGVs, which are evaluated in the operations of a Container Terminal. The objective is to identify number of automated guided vehicles and cassettes required in order to that a number of cranes will not be idle during ship loading and unloading operations. A protocol called Contract Net is evaluated in the coordination of cassettes with automated guided vehicles, which are represented as agents in a simulator. The simulation tests show that under various scenarios a high throughput of container handling is achieved using cassettes, which act as a moving buffer while coordinating with IPSI AGVs 1