A SIMULATION MODEL FOR THE PLANNING AND CONTROL OF AGVS AT AUTOMATED CONTAINER TERMINALS

This paper presents a scalable and flexible agent-based simulation (ABS) model for the planning and control of AGVs at automated container terminals (ACTs). A comprehensive and generic multi-agent system is presented to effectively manage the container handling process between the quay and stacks of ACTs. Specifically, we design an agent-based Traffic Manager, which serves as a control application layer for all processes related to the horizontal transport of containers using AGVs. Our ABS model provides a playground to easily test out the effectiveness of different types and layouts of ACTs.