Real-time multi-agent fleet management strategy for autonomous underground mines vehicles

This paper proposes a real-time multi-agent fleet management strategy for autonomous underground mines vehicles. The fleet management strategy is based on multi-agent technology and includes a novel variation of the Contract-Net protocol. This paper also proposes a set of conflict management procedures to deal with the narrow nature of underground drifts, as well as the sequencing of trucks' loading activities. This strategy is tested in a simulated environment based on an industrial case study. Both the strategy and the test environment were implanted using AnyLogic. More specifically, the fleet management activities addressed are dispatching, routing and traffic management of mining vehicles, which deal respectively with the assignment of the next destination to a vehicle that has just completed a task; the choice of the route to be followed to reach the selected destination; and traffic coordination in the underground transportation network, made up of one-lane bi-directional road segments. To evaluate the proposed solution, an agent-based simulation model of a Canadian underground gold mine is implemented with AnyLogic. Results show that the proposed coordination strategy outperform the one currently employed strategy by the mine under investigation.