Real-Time Scheduling for Non-crossing Stacking Cranes in an Automated Container Terminal

Abstract

This paper proposes a local-search-based real-time scheduling method for non-crossing stacking cranes in an automated container terminal. Considering the dynamic property of the yard crane operation and real-time constraints, the method builds a new crane schedule for a fixed-length look-ahead horizon whenever a new crane job is requested. One difficulty in crane scheduling is that sometimes additional crane operations need to be done to complete a requested job, especially when other containers are stacked on top of the requested container. We use a redundant and variable-length representation of a candidate solution for search to accommodate those additional operations. Simulation experiment shows that the local-search-based method outperforms heuristic-based method in real-time situations.