Contracts for fully automated China terminal

In December, Camco Technologies Shanghai was awarded a contract by ZPMC, general contractor for the terminal, for the integration of its BoxCatcher crane OCR technology for five STS cranes, built by ZPMC; and a second contract for the gate automation of Qinzhou terminal, China’s first fully automated terminal for sea-rail transportation.

Camco BoxCatcher

The STS cranes will be installed at the automatic container berths in Beibu Gulf Port Qinzhou terminal. Camco’s sliding BoxCatcher technology will be used for container registration and identification during vessel loading and discharging. The disruptive OCR hardware will be installed on the cranes manufactured at the ZPMC Shanghai production facility.

After shipment, the cranes will serve the first automated container berths at the Qinzhou Greenfield terminal located in the China (Guangxi) Pilot Free Trade Zone. The sliding BoxCatcher OCR system will register every container during the vessel loading or unloading at berths N° 7 and N° 8 in the Qinzhou terminal. To allow the BoxCatcher camera to follow the flight path of the spreader, the camera slides along vertical rails, mounted on the crane portal legs.

With a traveling speed of up to 6 m/s and data processing time of 8 seconds per move, the BoxCatcher easily supports up to 36 moves per hour per crane. Whether it concerns a single, twin, tandem or quad lift, the BoxCatcher system will capture every box, feeding the Terminal Operating System (TOS) with accurate data.

While the reading of the PLC guarantees that images are made at the exact height, the integrated laser scanner adjusts positioning and triggering for any skew and sway during crane operations.

Given the two cameras for the short sides and two cameras for the long sides, the BoxCatcher is able to capture 360° images of the container. All image processing is done on-board the camera system. The Camco OCR engine runs on Camco proprietary image analysis software and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) algorithms. The engines keep the images for storage enabling Qinzhou terminal to perform efficient claims management.

Advanced Gate Automation.

The second contract includes the automation of the terminal gate and yard access processes. The Camco gate automation solution will handle up to 600 trucks per hour, feeding the terminal TOS with accurate date for process optimization.

Camco provides ‘2X2 OCR Truck Portals In and Out’ as well as all kiosks for the terminal In- and Out- gates and lanes as well for the yard access. The Camco gate automation solution integrates the Gate Operating System (GOS) software for managing kiosks, OCR portals and access control systems as well as the operator exception handling application.