Coordination of waterborne AGVs

The possible larger amount of container throughput and the limited handling capacities of existing infrastructures impose increasingly high pressure on large ports in improving competitiveness. Inside container terminals, land-side automated guided vehicles have been used extensively for decades to improve terminal operational efficiency and sustainability. Transport between terminals, i.e., Inter Terminal Transport (ITT), is currently mainly realized by manned trucks. However, road traffic has already been heavy in port areas with limited land. For geographically complex ports, e.g., the port of Rotterdam, travel distances by land can be much longer than by water between some terminals. Expanding the existing physical transportation infrastructure might be an option, at extremely high costs nonetheless. As an alternative, more efficient and sustainable ways for port logistics need to be investigated.