Study on Scheduling System Based on Multi-Agent of Container Terminal

The primary objective of container terminal schedule system is the reduction of the time in terminal for the ships without physical expansion by optimizing allocation of existed machine and maximizing the productivity of the quay cranes. As there are a limited number of berths and resources available in container terminals for delivering services to container ships and the arrivals and capacities of container ships are randomly and stochastic, the problem of terminal schedule decision-making is discrete and dynamic under many constraints. This paper investigates the use of MAS (multi-agent system) as the basis for a terminal schedule system in analyzing the assignment of berths to arriving container ships at a container terminal and arranges proper equipments for ships under various constraints and policies. The scheduling system based on multi-agent of container terminal has 4 scheduling agent groups, which can solve conflicts and collisions between agents by means of competition or negotiation. In the cooperation process of multi-agent-based terminal schedule system, the scheduling task is divided and solved through the blackboard subsystem, the principle of task assignment is contract-net, which can avoid resource contest in scheduling