Reference
A. N. Tarău, B. De Schutter, and J.
Hellendoorn, "Route choice control of automated baggage handling systems,"
Transportation Research Record, no. 2106, pp. 76-82,
2009.
Abstract
State-of-the-art baggage handling systems transport luggage in an automated way
using destination coded vehicles (DCVs). These vehicles transport the bags at
high speeds on a "mini" railway network. Currently, the networks are simple,
with only a few junctions, since otherwise bottlenecks would be created at the
junctions. This makes the system inefficient. In the research we conduct, more
complex networks are considered. In order to optimize the performance of the
system we develop and compare centralized and decentralized control methods
that can be used to route the DCVs through the track network. The proposed
centralized control method is model predictive control (MPC). Due to the large
computation effort centralized MPC requires, decentralized MPC and a fast
decentralized heuristic approach are also proposed. When implementing the
decentralized approaches, each junction has its own local controller for
positioning the switch going into the junction and the switch going out of the
junction. In order to assess the advantages and disadvantages of centralized
MPC, decentralized MPC, and the decentralized heuristic approach, we also
discuss a simple benchmark case study. The considered control methods are
compared for several scenarios. Results indicate that centralized MPC becomes
intractable when a large stream of bags has to be handled, while decentralized
MPC can still be used to suboptimally solve the problem. Moreover, the
decentralized heuristic approach usually gives worse results than those
obtained when using decentralized MPC, but with very low computation time.
Publisher page
Downloads
BibTeX
@article{TarDeS:09-011,
author = {Tar{\u{a}}u, Alina N. and De Schutter, Bart and Hellendoorn,
Johannes},
title = {Route Choice Control of Automated Baggage Handling Systems},
journal = {Transportation Research Record},
number = {2106},
pages = {76--82},
year = {2009}
}