Modelling Transport Networks by Means of Autonomous Units

The concept of autonomous units to model distributed logistic processes and their interactions in a transport network is introduced. Autonomous units provide a general approach with rigorous semantics that allow the visual modelling of logistic processes in the transport domain in a systematic and structured way. Differing from existing models it especially incorporates the specification of autonomous or self-controlled behaviour of the participating actors. It means that the respective actions are not always predefined but allow for autonomous choice. By example in this paper a negotiation based approach is introduced. Due to this approach being formal and well-defined it supports testing and verification of required properties of the modelled systems at the level of specification.