Seamless Task Scheduling for Vehicle-Crane Coordination in Container Terminals: A Spatio-Temporal Optimization Approach

Task scheduling for vehicle–crane coordination is crucial for the operational efficiency of electrified automated container terminals (ACTs). However, under fully shared dispatching, existing studies rarely capture how charging-induced capacity fluctuations disrupt bidirectional service–arrival matching and propagate service-window shifts. To address this gap, this study proposes a comprehensive spatio-temporal optimization approach. Firstly, a bi-objective model is established to minimize service–arrival mismatch and vehicle energy consumption under state-of-charge (SOC) and charger-capacity constraints, explicitly quantifying vehicle–crane alignment at both handling interfaces. Secondly, an enhanced multi-objective algorithm (ST-NSGA-II) is developed, integrating a feasibility-preserving recursive decoding mechanism and a spatio-temporal variable neighborhood search (VNS) procedure. Finally, numerical experiments demonstrate that ST-NSGA-II significantly reduces mismatch and energy consumption compared to standard NSGA-II in large-scale scenarios. It also outperforms MOEA/D in Pareto-set quality, yielding a higher hypervolume (1.301 vs. 0.960) and a lower Spacing value (0.102 vs. 0.185). The results demonstrate that the proposed spatio-temporal optimization approach can effectively reduce handover mismatch compared to conventional scheduling modes, thereby achieving seamless task scheduling for vehicle–crane coordination.