While the microbial water quality in the Platte River is seasonally impacted by excreta from migrating cranes, there are no methods available to study crane fecal contamination. Here we characterized microbial populations in crane feces using phylogenetic analysis of 16S rRNA gene fecal clone libraries. Using these sequences, a novel crane quantitative PCR (Crane1) assay was developed, and its ...

In a modern rail–rail transshipment yard huge gantry cranes transship containers between different freight trains, so that hub-and-spoke railway systems are enabled. In this context, we consider the transshipment yard scheduling problem (TYSP) where trains have to be assigned to bundles, which jointly enter and leave the yard. The objective is to minimize split moves and revisits. Split moves a...

This paper reports the findings of using multi-agent based simulation model to evaluate the sawmill yard operations within a large privately owned sawmill in Sweden, Bergkvist Insjön AB in the current case. Conventional working routines within sawmill yard threaten the overall efficiency and thereby limit the profit margin of sawmill. Deploying dynamic work routines within the sawmill yard is n...

This study considers a practical overhead crane control problem of designing a fuzzy control to ensure that the trolley arrives precisely at its destination; the load swing angle approaches to zero, and the energy of input and states is minimized. Furthermore, the constraints for the overhead crane operation are also considered and satisfied. Those constraints are that when the crane is moving,...

Tower cranes are major and expensive equipment that are extensively used at building construction projects and harbors for lifting heavy objects to demand points. The tower crane locating problem to position a tower crane and supply points in a building construction site for supplying all requests in minimum time, has been raised from more than twenty years ago. This problem has already been so...

This paper proposes a novel anti-swing control strategy for an overhead crane. The controller includes both position regulation and anti-swing control. Since the crane model is not exactly known, fuzzy rules are used to compensate friction, gravity as well as the coupling between position and anti-swing control. A high-gain observer is introduced to estimate the joint velocities to realize PD c...

In this paper, we address workflow management system for automatically operating yard management system which can fill up a gap between transportation and warehouse management system in supply chain management. But, it is difficult to find an optimal solution for yard operation problems because of its dynamic complexities. Instead, we propose workflow management system which describes the autom...

The container crane is a key machine in ports. Over the past 15 years, modeling and control of quay cranes for automating ports has been the main research issue. In this paper, crane models and control methodologies appeared in the literature are reviewed. A generalized formulation of the most widely used crane model is introduced. Various control techniques are briefly discussed. In conclusion...

This reasearch studies ACO algorithms for the switch engine scheduling in a Railroad Yard. The cars are moved individually or grouped into blocks by a set of locomotives called switch engines which are dedicated to moving around the cars in the yard. The need for moving comes from the fact that the arriving trains are disassembled into blocks of cars, undergo some operations like, loading , unl...