Study of onboard expert systems to augment space shuttle and space station autonomy

The feasibility of onboard crew activity planning was examined. The use of expert systems technology to aid crewmembers in locating stowed equipment was also investigated. The crew activity planning problem, along with a summary of past and current research efforts, was discussed in detail. The requirements and specifications used to develop the crew activity planning system was also defined. The guidelines used to create, develop, and operate the MFIVE Crew Scheduler and Logistics Clerk were discussed. Also discussed is the mathematical algorithm, used by the MFIVE Scheduler, which was developed to aid in optimal crew activity planning

Stowage Planning System for Ferry Ro-Ro Ships Using Particle Swarm Optimization Method

Stowage planning involves distributing cargo on board a ship, including quantity, weight, and destination details. It consists of collecting cargo manifest data, planning cargo location on decks, and calculating stability until the vessel is declared safe for sailing. Finding the ideal solution to real-world situations in this stowage planning problem is challenging and frequently requires a very long computing period. The Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is one of the evolutionary algorithms known for its efficient performance. PSO has been extended to complex optimization problems due to its fast convergence and easy implementation. In this study, the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) method is implemented to automate stowage arrangements on ships considering three factors (width, length, and weight of the vehicle). This system was evaluated with KMP Legundi vehicle manifest data and four load cases of 12 different vehicle types that can be loaded on Ferry / Ro-Ro Ships. It provides complete vehicle layouts and allows interactive changes for stowage planners, ensuring speed and accuracy in arranging ship cargo.Stowage planning involves distributing cargo on board a ship, including quantity, weight, and destination details. It consists of collecting cargo manifest data, planning cargo location on decks, and calculating stability until the vessel is declared safe for sailing. Finding the ideal solution to real-world situations in this stowage planning problem is challenging and frequently requires a very long computing period. The Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is one of the evolutionary algorithms known for its efficient performance. PSO has been extended to complex optimization problems due to its fast convergence and easy implementation. In this study, the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) method is implemented to automate stowage arrangements on ships considering three factors (width, length, and weight of the vehicle). This system was evaluated with KMP Legundi vehicle manifest data and four load cases of 12 different vehicle types that can be loaded on Ferry / Ro-Ro Ships. It provides complete vehicle layouts and allows interactive changes for stowage planners, ensuring speed and accuracy in arranging ship cargo

Sequence-Based Simulation-Optimization Framework With Application to Port Operations at Multimodal Container Terminals

It is evident in previous works that operations research and mathematical algorithms can provide optimal or near-optimal solutions, whereas simulation models can aid in predicting and studying the behavior of systems over time and monitor performance under stochastic and uncertain circumstances. Given the intensive computational effort that simulation optimization methods impose, especially for large and complex systems like container terminals, a favorable approach is to reduce the search space to decrease the amount of computation. A maritime port can consist of multiple terminals with specific functionalities and specialized equipment. A container terminal is one of several facilities in a port that involves numerous resources and entities. It is also where containers are stored and transported, making the container terminal a complex system. Problems such as berth allocation, quay and yard crane scheduling and assignment, storage yard layout configuration, container re-handling, customs and security, and risk analysis become particularly challenging. Discrete-event simulation (DES) models are typically developed for complex and stochastic systems such as container terminals to study their behavior under different scenarios and circumstances. Simulation-optimization methods have emerged as an approach to find optimal values for input variables that maximize certain output metric(s) of the simulation. Various traditional and nontraditional approaches of simulation-optimization continue to be used to aid in decision making. In this dissertation, a novel framework for simulation-optimization is developed, implemented, and validated to study the influence of using a sequence (ordering) of decision variables (resource levels) for simulation-based optimization in resource allocation problems. This approach aims to reduce the computational effort of optimizing large simulations by breaking the simulation-optimization problem into stages. Since container terminals are complex stochastic systems consisting of different areas with detailed and critical functions that may affect the output, a platform that accurately simulates such a system can be of significant analytical benefit. To implement and validate the developed framework, a large-scale complex container terminal discrete-event simulation model was developed and validated based on a real system and then used as a testing platform for various hypothesized algorithms studied in this work

Simultaneous allocation and scheduling of quay cranes, yard cranes, and trucks in dynamical integrated container terminal operations

We present a dynamical modeling of integrated (end-to-end) container terminal operations using finite state machine (FSM) framework where each state machine is represented by a discrete-event system (DES) formulation. The hybrid model incorporates the operations of quay cranes (QC), internal trucks (IT), and yard cranes (YC) and also the selection of storage positions in container yard (CY) and vessel bays. The QC and YC are connected by the IT in our models. As opposed to the commonly adapted modeling in container terminal operations, in which the entire information/inputs to the systems are known for a defined planning horizon, in this research we use real-time trucks, crane, and container storage operations information, which are always updated as the time evolves. The dynamical model shows that the predicted state variables closely follow the actual field data from a container terminal in Tanjung Priuk, Jakarta, Indonesia. Subsequently, using the integrated container terminal hybrid model, we proposed a model predictive algorithm (MPA) to obtain the near-optimal solution of the integrated terminal operations problem, namely the simultaneous allocation and scheduling of QC, IT, and YC, as well as selecting the storage location for the inbound and outbound containers in the CY and vessel. The numerical experiment based on the extensive Monte Carlo simulation and real dataset show that the MPA outperforms by 3-6% both of the policies currently implemented by the terminal operator and the state-of-the-art method from the current literature