Modeling and control of the AGV system in an automated container terminal

We study a modeling and traf??c control problem of the automated guided vehicle (AGV) system in a container terminal. The workspace of the vehicles (straddle carriers) is modeled as a road network composed of of lanes, crosses and depots. The container transport task for each vehicle is abstracted as a ??nite sequence of zones to be traversed by a vehicle, starting at the initial zone of the vehicle and ending with some depot. A set of traf??c rules is proposed to ensure the completion of all jobs with the absence of vehicle deadlocks and collisions. The traffic rules are very simple and real-time implementable. Moreover, these rules can be realized almost distributedly requiring little intervention from a central controller.