Routing of AGVs on Automated Container Terminals

An important aspect of the quayside operation at a container terminal is the transport of containers between the quaycranes and the stack area. On automated container terminals these transportation jobs are executed by Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs). Routing of Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) is the process of determining routes for a set of AGVs to fulfill their respective transport jobs. Routing has a relatively large impact on the productivity and flexibility of AGV systems and thus on the performance of the terminal. In most existing systems, AGVs use a map of predefined, fIxed paths that are combined to obtain routes. However, theoretically free ranging capabilities of AGVs allows them to use the entire traveling area. In this paper a summary is given of the research towards improvement of the performance of automated transport systems by developing advanced routing strategies that are fully using the free ranging and positioning capacities of AGVs. The specific context of this work is the transport of containers between stack and quay cranes (and vice versa) on an automated container terminal.