A multi-agent system for container terminal management

Solutions for improving container terminal productivity are concerned on implementing strategies and technologies of the container terminal management system. Multi-agent system provides a suitable and effective method to address this problem. This paper presents a multi-agent-based system for resource allocation and operation scheduling problems in container terminals to optimize the productivity of container terminals. A prototype of this system is built with consideration of the characteristics of container terminal production. Agent cooperation strategies, agent communication mechanism and its implementation are partially shown with descriptions. Agent design is also given in this paper. Finally, we give partial implemented prototype of this multi-agent-based system. We hope this study would activate further and deeper researches about multi-agent system (MAS) solutions and applications in container terminal management.