Design and simulation of automated container terminal using AGVs

Booming in the world trade, scarcity of land for yard expansion in many ports, and deployment of new massive megaships have magnified the need for finding better ways of performing container terminal operations. High-density Automated Container Terminals (ACTs), with high operation efficiency and requiring less land, can thus become potential candidates. In this paper, an Automated Guided Vehicle based ACT (AGV-ACT) is proposed and designed to meet the future projection made by several ports. A microscopic simulation model is developed and used to simulate the ACT systems for the projected operational scenario. Some performance criteria are defined and used for performance evaluation. The simulation result shows that the proposed ACT system can meet the future demand of ports by requiring less land and providing higher efficiency.