21. Smart Industry Applications in The Brainport Campus - 4CBLW00-21

In this challenge, we present a practical industrial problem posed by one of the companies in the Brainport Campus. This academic year (2024/2025), the challenge is presented by Vanderlande, a market-leading expert in future-proof logistic process automation in the warehousing, airports and parcel sectors. This challenge focuses on the parcel sector in particular.  The main goal of this challenge is to develop an efficient parcel sorting algorithm that can be used on a line sorter. This is a conveyor-based transport and sorting system, designed to assign parcels to a specific outfeed, depending on their destination. Whenever a parcel fails to get sorted after traversing the line sorter, it will be transported back to the beginning of the line sorter. This is undesirable, as this greatly increases the time a parcel is in the system and reduces the capacity of the sorter. Improving the rate at which parcels successfully get sorted (sorting success rate) can reduce the time that parcels are in the system and, simultaneously, reduce the load that the system experiences. The challenge is to develop and test smart algorithms to assign parcels to the outfeeds. The challenge will be organized in the form of a contest, where the best performing algorithm will receive an award (i.e., a Limburgse Vlaai and eternal honour).