A POLLED DISPATCHING STRATEGY FOR AUTOMATED GUIDED VEHICLES IN PORT CONTAINER TERMINALS

It is discussed how to assign delivery tasks to automated guided vehicles (AGVs) for multiple container cranes in automated container terminals. The primary goal of dispatching AGVs is to complete all the lading and discharging operations as early as possible, and the secondary goal is to minimize the total travel distance of AGVs. It is assumed that AGVs are not dedicated to a specific container crane but shared among multiple cranes. A mathematical formulation is developed and a heuristic algorithm is suggested to obtain a near optimal solution with a reasonable amount of computational time. The single-cycle and the dual-cycle operations in both the seaside and the landside operations are analyzed. The effects of pooling AGVs for multiple container cranes on the performance of an entire AGV system are also analyze through a numerical experiment.