Kalmar: VR can improve terminal safety

At its virtual environments lab at its Technology and Competence Centre in Finland, Kalmar has employed VR to improve RTG operator visibility for a terminal customer.

Tweaking the camera positions on a remote-controlled RTG installation, the business trialled over 120 different camera placements across two days before agreeing on the perfect configuration.

“Yes, we have the luxury of a fully equipped RTG test site in our back yard in Tampere, but how long would it take to test 120 camera positions on a real crane? Maybe two months, with a crew of two technicians working full time, at height on a 20-metre lift, in short daylight hours in the freezing winter weather?” Jari Hämäläinen, Terminal Automation director, and Hannu Santahuhta, senior manager for Simulation & Virtual Environments within the department, said.

“So, even with this simple visualisation application, we can accomplish something like a twentyfold improvement in safety testing productivity, while simultaneously improving the occupational safety of our own staff and contractors – and all this before the new cameras are installed on the client’s RTG, where the real benefits actually become realised in the day-to-day work of the terminal,” the pair added.

The Kalmar Tampere lab’s VR truck-driving simulator has also been used to determine whether positioning indicators on a crane have been mounted in the right place, while 3D visualisation has been utilised to model an entire container terminal in the company’s development project for AutoRTG cranes.

Mr Hämäläinen and Mr Santahuhta added that once the company has accurate 3D models of an entire terminal and real-time position and usage data from container handling equipment, using 3D playback visualisation of terminal safety incidents or near-misses is possible.

The pair also noted other developments potentially available to the company, highlighting see-through technology, sensor fusion solutions and visualising how various sensors on a machine perceive a working environment and its obstacles, as well as collaborative robotics.

“As sensoring and automation technologies develop, it is only a matter of time when this line begins to blur and collaborative human-machine interaction begins to make its way to the world of container handling,” they said.