Cooperation between Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles to enhance container terminal operations

Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles (IAVs) constitute one of the component systems of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) that can operate in confined private spaces, as well as in open and public spaces. The seaports or container terminals are one of the important confined spaces that have attracted extensive research interests over the last decade in the use of information communication technology to improve the operation of ITS. The main goal of research works undertaken so far in this area was to improving the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the indoor traffic, by transporting optimally and sustainably freight from ship to the logistics and unloading areas. The use of a team of IAVs with wireless communication capabilities by rearranging efficiently all operations of handling, routing,…is a strategic objective for seaport authorities and their customers. In this paper, we consider inter-Vehicles communication system in which IAVs can communicate and cooperate to avoid collision problem in the predetermined intersection areas in the yard. We investigate the performance of our solution through simulations using Omnet++/Veins Simulation framework. We show that the implemented cooperation mechanism can significantly reduce the unloading time in the seaport.