Research On Container Terminal Scheduling System Based On Multi-Agent

Container terminal consists of containers, ships, handling equipments,communication equipments, berths, container yards and communication establishment, etc.Since container ships arrive at the terminal randomly and their loading capacities arealso stochastic, the problem of terminal schedule decision-making is discrete anddynamic. The target of terminal operation scheduling is to make the existed resourceof terminal most and to optimize schedule decision-making in order to shorten thetime in port for ships (transshipment time) on the basis of technological process ofloading and unloading.With the rapid development of computer control technology, it is inevitabledirection that the management of container terminal has become more automatic andintelligent. Since Agent has some intelligence to fulfill tasks in an automatic way,receive information, negotiate about affair and can confederate with other ones tosolve complex problem, it can reduce manual workforce and information burden.Application of agent technique to container terminal is helpful to such complexproblems as the scheduling of container terminal.According to features of loading/unloading process of port container, The keytechnologies of Multi-Agent-based Container Terminal Schedule System (MACTSS)are research in this paper; the main contents and results are as fellow:(1)To aim at that the characteristic of management of container terminal is howto optimize resource of terminal, the trends of decision-making way for managementof container terminal, research and application of Multi-Agent system and ant colonysystem are summarized. It is put forward that aim, significance and the problems tobe solved of MACTSS.(2)To aim at loading/unloading schedule problems of container terminal, basedon character of Agent and Multi-Agent and allocation rules of establishment andequipment on terminal, it is set up model of MACTSS in this paper. The Agent ofMACTSS make decision and act based on the message from other Agents, so theseAgents are reactivity ones. According to relationship of Agents, communicationsequence among Agents and Schedule flow of MACTSS are designed(3)According to three dependency relationship of equipments on terminal, it isset up model of coordination. Based on three elements of coordination mechanism,which is coordination strategy, coordination language and coordination protocol, thecoordination process is pointed out. Comparing some kinds of coordination mechanism, Contract Net Protocol is chosen as coordination mechanism toMACTSS.(4)According to fact of berth allocation on container terminal and based onanalysis of the berth and quay crane allocation problem, the paper proposes a berthand quay crane allocation programming and allocating program of Berth AllocationAgent through accepting message from Quay Crane Schedule Agent. According tooptimization theory of ant colony system, the paper proposes parallel ant colonyarithmetic based on pheromone and CPN, which is applied into berth allocation tohelp to shorten the time in port for ships. Through camparing with particle arithmetic,parallel ant colony arithmetic is better than particle arithmetic aim at berth allocationproblem.(5)Comparing traditional and dynamic schedule of container trucks, the latter isselected, which is all container trucks are shared by all crane. By applying fuzzytheory, this paper advances negotiation arithmetic based on fuzzy theory and CPN.this paper put forward a fuzzy control method of dynamic dispatching containertrucks on container terminal and carried out function design of container terminalfuzzy control and made an example as an explain on the base of fuzzy control systemtheory.(6)Combining the character of operation on container terminal and the ways ofcommunication among Agents, this paper finds that massage/dialog is fit fornegotiation in MACTSS and proposes communication behavior of Agents. Under theKQML criterion, combined the negotiation mechanism based on CPN, the Agentprimitive set of the system. This paper designs communication mechanism on base ofSocket technology to realize the communication among multi-Agent.(7)This paper adopts C# as developing language, SQL Server as database,ASRnet as developing technology to establish the platform of MACTSS, on whichAgents in different operation systems can communicate and negotiate with one other.An example of Truck scheduling conform model and Agent technology applying inthe container terminal schedule system based Multi-Agent.