Transportation Scheduling and Simulation in a Railroad Scenario: A Multi-Agent Approach

This paper presents a multi-agent system for planning, plan optimization and plan executionmonitoring in a real-time railroad transportation scenario. The planning process is implemented as incremental anytime algorithm that is capable of integrating new task specifications in the ongoing planning and planexecutionprocess. An initial solution is obtained by executing thecontractnet protocol for every new task, the resulting solution is then optimized by a simulated trading approach. The execution of the resulting plans ismonitored by a plan executionmonitor that dynamically controls ongoing driving or coupling activities of transportation units and that handles deviations from the original plan in the case of external events, e.g. location route failures or train delays.