Decentralized routing control for guided transportation systems

The transport of baggage through airports by means of individual vehicles imposes severe challenges on a central control system. In this paper, a decentralized control concept is described, which can overcome the deficiencies of central control systems. The decentralized concept consists of (a) a market-based strategy for the assignment of transportation tasks to vehicles and (b) a vehicle routing mechanism in analogy to internet data routing mechanisms. In this contribution, the method of (b) is described in detail. The method has been implemented in object-oriented software, and simulation experiments have shown that by these means advantages can be achieved regarding travel time in case of disturbances. The concept can be transferred to other kinds of transportation systems, such as autonomous guided vehicles in factories and ports, and furthermore to other routing problems for mobile resources.