Intelligent Control of Vehicle-Based Internal Transport Systems

“Intelligent control of vehicle-based internal transport (VBIT) systems” copes with real-time dispatching and scheduling of internal-transport vehicles, such as forklifts and guided vehicles. VBIT systems can be found in warehouses, distribution centers, manufacturing plants, airport and transshipment terminals. Using simulation of two realworld environments, dispatching rules described in literature and several newly introduced rules are compared on performance. The performance evaluation suggests that in environments where queue space is not a restriction, distance-based dispatching rules such as shortest-travel-distance-first outperform time-based dispatching rules such as modified-first-come-first-served and using load prearrival information has a significant positive impact on reducing the average load waiting time. Experimental results also reveal that multi-attribute dispatching rules combining distance and time aspects of vehicles and loads are robust to variations in working conditions. In addition, multi-attribute rules which take vehicle empty travel distance and vehicle requirement at a station into account perform very well in heavy-traffic VBIT systems such as baggage handling systems. Besides dispatching rules, the potential contribution of dynamic vehicle scheduling for VBIT systems is investigated. Experiments using simulation in combination with optimization show that when sufficient pre-arrival information is available a dynamic scheduling approach outperforms the dispatching approach. This thesis also evaluates the impact of guide-path layout, load arrival rate and variance, and the amount of load pre-arrival information on different vehicle control approaches (scheduling and dispatching). Based on experimental results, recommendations for selecting appropriate vehicle control approaches for specific situations are presented

Wireless sensor networks and their industrial applications

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) represent a relatively modern concept which has captured the interest of many in the research community. Coupled with appropriate hardware, they offer great flexibility in terms of their applicability to solving real world problems. This can be seen with applications ranging from environmental issues to healthcare and even artificial intelligence. Much of the work relating to WSN has been predominantly in the research domain. and so it is the purpose of this study to investigate ways in which they can be applied to solve industrial issues. This study particularly considers inventory management in the airline and packaged gas industries where there are many common fundamental requirements. A prototype system is presented which includes a database to record and obtain relevant tracking data in order to facilitate asset identification. Information of how this system may be applied within each industry is also included, in addition to how WSN can be utilised to fulfil the specific needs of individual industries through the use of custom built hardware and sensors. Initial experimental results of this system are also given along with experimental results pertaining to the suitability of WSN devices in industry. Despite WSN devices being still relatively new many advances have been made in order to make them more powerful and also smaller. However, as the size of the devices has decreased very been done with regards to critical components such as the antenna. As a result this work looks at the production of an industrially suitable antenna in terms of its design, construction and testing. Finally, wireless sensing in the automotive industry is briefly discussed. The apphcation of WSN in the automotive industry aims to improve recent spot weld monitoring techniques which determine the quality and integrity of a spot weld in real-time

Federal Register

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