Decentralized railway control based on autonomous agents

摘要

Because today's railway traffic is limited by its infrastructure, new railway control concepts are being investigated which allow a more efficient usage of the existing infrastructure. A suitable approach is to aim for a decentralised control to be more flexible. This can be achieved by intelligent agents, which provide a means for flexible resource allocation and, thus, for achieving an optimised balance between infrastructure load and customer requirements. The paper describes how intelligent agents can be used for the flexible planning and operation of railway systems.