Study on Distributed Consistent Cooperative Control of Multi-ART in Automated Container Terminals

In order to address the congestion problem of vehicles in quay of automated container terminal with parallel layout and side-loading operations, the study regards the terminal operation system as a multi-agent system (MAS). Then, A dynamic cooperative speed regulation strategy for a group intelligence-oriented multi-ART (Artificial Intelligence Robot of Transportation) is proposed to realize the smart and distributed traffic control of container terminals. Via the real-time data interchange and message passing with ART group, the individual ART implements the collaborative speed regulation with the combination of the dynamic speed regulation strategy. Through the above-mentioned method, the sequence of ARTs arriving at the quay can be adjusted, which can decrease the waiting time of ARTs at the quay. Considering the consistency problem of individual and group agent among the dynamic speed regulation of ARTs, a novel distributed consensus protocol is established to assure that the individual status of ART will tend to converge basically during the collaborative speed regulation process, and the convergence of system can be guaranteed. Based on the case of automated container terminal of Tianjin Port, the paper establishes a multi-agent based simulation model, and simulates the decision-making process, and validates the effectiveness of mentioned model and strategy. The results demonstrate that the strategy can decrease the waiting time of ARTs under uncertainty environment of terminal and improve the operation efficiency of system.