Distributed Clustering of Autonomous Shipping Containers by Concept, Location, and Time

Recent developments in logistics show an increasing trend towards autonomous control. Intelligent software agents, that represent logistic objects like shipping containers, plan and schedule their way through a logistic network. This paper addresses the aspect of cooperation. A special focus lies on the second step of the model for cooperation, namely team formation. The question is by which criteria shipping containers, or logistic objects and agents in general, can form clusters. Starting from the particular demands of the logistics domain this paper argues in favour of conceptual, spatial, and temporal properties. A framework that takes concept, location, and time into account is introduced and demonstrated by an example application.

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