Agent-based negotiation and decision-making for efficient hinterland transport plan

The logistics and transport operations, which have become more information intensive and more technologically dependent, are undergoing dramatic revolutions. Among various logistics activities, the role of transport is becoming more and more important. In order to provide high quality service and obtain higher return on investment, information sharing and cooperative decision making become a must in this dynamic changing environment. In particular, multi agent (MA) technologies have drawn significant attention for enabling autonomous information sharing and cooperation in a complex and distributed environment. This paper presents the development of coordination and decision making mechanisms for the implementation of autonomous control with MA technology in the domain of hinterland transport. It tackles the challenges of the hinterland transport planning caused by limited information sharing and lack of cooperation. The objective of the developed system is to provide quality transport plan to achieve high level of performance and robustness in hinterland logistics. The paper specifies and implements the MA cooperation, negotiation and decision-making processes. A case study is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the developed system.