Solutions for the Train Unit Shunting Problem are constantly being researched and improved to be- come more efficient and match the needs of train transport in the Netherlands. For this reason, we are exploring new ways to find patterns in the train data to identify where those solutions could be en- hanced. More specifically, we are trying to find patterns that make identifying different locations possible. We identify patterns in the capacity of the shunting yards and the types of trains used in various locations, which result in reasonable ac- curacy in classification. Some locations operate closer to their capacity, and some require longer paths to get inside the shunting yards. These find- ings could be helpful not only for the planning algo- rithms but also in identifying which locations might need expansion or restructuring and where more of the train fleet should be allocated.

This paper analyses manually realised solutions to the Train Unit Shunting Problem (TUSP) to find patterns in train type. The parking element is most important for the TUSP. Therefore, this research specifically investigates the presence of train type patterns in parking track and parking time. The difference in the patterns between main train type and train subtype is also analysed. The study uses statistical hypothesis testing to look for biases between individual train types and parking tracks. Kernel density estimation is used to analyse the differences in parking time between the types. The results show that there are strong patterns in type and parking track, but no clear difference in parking time. Considering subtype results in the differences being more specific. It is suspected that the strongly present track pattern is a strategy used by human planners.

Shunting yards are locations next to train stations that serve as parking places for trains when they are not in operation and often contain facilities for maintenance and cleaning for passenger trains. Planning of the tasks regarding shunting trains involves routing, assignment of tracks, and scheduling tasks. This is done manually and requires a lot of effort, making it inefficient. Identifying patterns specific in the arrival times of trains at shunting yards can help to predict future train arrivals and potential delays throughout the year more accurately. This enables the alignment of staff and equipment with train arrivals, minimizing idle time and optimizing cost efficiency.
This research focuses on extracting and analyzing the arrival times of trains at shunting yards using a dataset consisting of GPS data. It conducts two algorithms to cluster the given data for each train unit within and across days to identify the same train across different days. Distributions and heatmaps of the arrival times and delays are created based on the identified train series. They are analyzed to identify patterns in train arrival times and delays across different months.

When not in service, trains are parked and serviced at shunting yards. The Train Unit Shunting Problem (TUSP), an NP-hard problem, encompasses the challenge of planning movements and tasks in shunting yards. A feasible shunting plan serves as a solution to the TUSP. Current automated planning tools utilized to assist human planners in this computationally heavy planning task are not able to distinguish inherent patterns in input train data, as opposed to humans. This paper aims to address this technological gap by examining whether valuable patterns could be extracted from shunting plan data, consisting of solutions to the TUSP. More specifically, it is mainly concerned with the automatic detection of whether a solution to the TUSP is a week or a weekend day. Therefore, the data is examined for the presence of several groups of patterns. Moreover, binary classification is performed on the data. The experiments conducted in this study suggest the presence of valuable patterns in the data, which could be leveraged to design specialized heuristics for automated planning models tailored to generate shunting plans for weekdays and weekends.

This research aims to find patterns in the live position data of trains within shunting yards. These patterns can be converted to heuristics and applied in algorithms developed by railway operators in the Netherlands to tackle the Train Unit Shunting Problem. The usage patterns were extracted from real-world location data of train units. Specifically, this research focuses on finding patterns in the paths taken in both temporal and spatial metrics. These investigations identified the busiest times in the shunting yards according to various metrics, such as the total number of trains and the number of serviced trains. These metrics are extracted from the type of train movement at a given moment, which was provided with the dataset. The accuracy of the provided train movement category has been analyzed and shown to be inaccurate for uses within shunting yards compared to a proposed approach. Finally, an algorithm for classifying train units that belong to the same train has been shown to have initial success.

This paper explores the application of landmark-based planning algorithms, specifically focusing on AND/OR landmark extraction methods. Drawing from classical planning principles and recent advancements, we investigate the effectiveness of landmark extraction in guiding the search for solutions to planning problems. Our research questions center on identifying effective domains for landmark extraction, assessing the utility of extracted landmarks, and comparing our implementation with existing literature. Utilizing the Symbolicplanners.jl framework, we implement AND/OR landmark extraction and evaluate its performance across various domains. Due to challenges in implementation, the landmarks we were able to extract had limited meaning. We propose future work to refine the AND/OR method and expand our analysis to include the Hm procedure.

The Fast Downward planning system is currently mainly used for solving classical problems. Another alternative to Fast Downward is SymbolicPlanners, which sacrifices speed for generality and extensibility. SymbolicPlanners is missing landmark based planners and landmark extraction algorithms. The research question we are trying to answer in this research paper is: What design choices can be made to adapt the forward propagation extraction algorithm into SymbolicPlanners?
The forward propagation landmark generation design choices are discussed and implemented in SymbolicPlanners. The runtime performance of the implementation is only about two times slower than the Fast Downward implementation. Another aspect of the implementation is the incorrect amount of landmarks generated in complex problems caused by limitation in the relaxed planning graph from SymbolicPlanners.

Algorithmic planners occasionally waste effort and thus computing time trying to solve certain tasks, as they often lack the human ability to recognize essential paths. These essential paths, termed landmarks, are vital for optimizing planning processes. This study revisits landmark-based planning methods introduced by Richter, Helmert, and Westphal in their 2008 paper, adapting and implementing them within a different framework, SymbolicPlanners, using the Julia programming language. The primary research question explores the performance of using landmarks as intermediary goals and pseudo-heuristics in the SymbolicPlanner framework. Sub-questions delve into the effectiveness of specific planning strategies, such as A^∗ Planner with GoalCount and HAdd heuristics, as well as planners utilizing landmarks. Evaluation over diverse domains reveals that LM^Local  and LM^LocalSmart outperform the basic GoalCount
heuristic and are on par with the HAdd heuristic. LM^Count, despite solving fewer instances, exhibits speed improvements over GoalCount in the instances that they both solve. Discussion highlights limitations, such as the non-exhaustive interference check in LM^LocalSmart and limiting factors in the SymbolicPlanner framework.

A lot of research has been conducted to make the task of plan generation more efficient. One idea to do so is the use of landmarks, which are sub-goals that must be true in every solution to the problem. The approximation of landmarks has a lower complexity than solving the task itself, and they can be used to guide the planner in the right direction.
In previous work, ideas to order landmarks are proposed and compared to algorithms that do not use them. We verify if this comparison is fair by testing both algorithms implemented in the same language and framework. In our experiment not many problem instances finish in time, but those that do are in line with previous experiments in that on average planners using landmarks produce longer solutions than planners that do not use them.

Landmarks are propositions or actions that must be true at some point in every valid solution plan [16]. Using landmarks, planners can develop solutions more efficiently. Different algorithms exist to extract landmarks from a planning problem. The one used in this study is FULL [13], a landmark extraction algorithm by Marzal et al. from 2011.
In this research, the performance of the FULL algorithm is analysed by comparing the total number of landmarks found to two other landmark extraction algorithms, namely forward propagation by Zhu and Givan [22] and backward propagation by Porteous et al. [16].
The original FULL algorithm is slightly modified, by removing orderings and disjunctive landmark extraction. FULL is implemented using Julia and was run on five different domains from the International Planning Competitions.
All of these domains are logical and 15 problems were randomly selected from them.
FULL managed to extract more landmarks in two out of the five domains, Grid and Logistics, compared to the two aforementioned algorithms.
In the three other domains, FULL matched the number of landmarks found by the best out of the two. The two domains where FULL performed well, were both transportation domains and this is where FULL's performance excels.
Runtime was not an issue when extracting landmarks in four of the five domains. Freecell consistently exceeded the timeout put in place, likely due to a bug.
Furthermore, a higher number of landmarks is also a desired outcome due to its use in planners, either as heuristics or intermediary goals.

Over 700 trains in the Netherlands are used daily for passenger transportation. Train operations involve tasks like parking, recombination, cleaning, and maintenance, which take place in shunting yards. The train unit shunting problem (TUSP) is a complex planning problem made more difficult by uncertainties such as delays. Most existing approaches overlook these disturbances and the approaches that consider them incorporate heuristics to enhance the robustness of their solutions to disturbances. This thesis proposes an alternative approach: utilizing probabilistic programming to turn an existing planning algorithm and simulator into a generative model of the TUSP. The model introduces disturbances without the need to modify the planning algorithm or simulator. Through two types of inference, we infer a distribution of robust solutions for the TUSP. Empirical results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach for inferring robust plans in small-scale scenarios.

A shunting yard is used to store trains between arrival and departure. A conflict arises in a shunting yard when one train obstructs another from leaving. Resolving a conflict is done by re-allocating the trains obstructing the departing train to other tracks in the shunting yard. However, these re-allocations complicate the problem at hand and incur high costs for train operators. Therefore, it is desirable to avoid conflicts whenever possible. The aim of this paper is to find an effective manner to deal with conflicts in a train shunting yard in an existing planner system. We propose the split into a portfolio planner, which first tries to find a solution without any re-allocations, and if that does not yield a solution will look for a solution with re-allocations. For both planners, a model is defined. Furthermore, the paper explores techniques to increase the speed of the first planner, namely heuristic search, a set partitioning approach, and constraint programming. An implementation of the latter approach has exhibited excellent performance across problems of all sizes.

In this paper, we discuss our novel approach to support mixed-direction shunting in the planning domain for tree-like shunting yards. We explain how we used numeric fluents to improve an existing PDDL domain to support such actions. We elaborate on the underlying conceptual model of our domain and argue how does it accurately represent
shunting problems. Furthermore, we describe the experiment that we performed with the MetricFF planner to evaluate our domain and discuss the results of the experiment. Finally, we argue why the MetricFF planning system is not suitable to efficiently support our domain in real-life scenarios.

When not in use, trains are stored at shunting yards, where they may need servicing. Planning for where the rolling stock should be parked during its stay at the yard is known as the Train Unit Shunting Problem (TUSP) and it is NP-hard. Algorithmic planners can assist with this computationally difficult task by providing a sequence of actions to be executed for the trains in the shunting yard. To output such a sequence, planners should be given a domain and an instance of it as input, both of which can be defined in the Planning Domain Definition Language (PDDL). In this paper, we first formalize the TUSP extended with servicing and implement a domain for it in PDDL. Then, we compare four planners submitted to the International Planning Competition 2018 against 9 instances of the domain. The best of these planners reduces the problem to the Boolean Satisfiability Problem. We improve its performance with 31.5% by removing redundant clauses and an irrelevant computational element of the reduction.