Gasgoo Awards 2022 applicant: Port Unmanned and Cloud Control system from Senior Automation

For the Gasgoo Awards 2022, Port Unmanned and Cloud Control system from Senior Automation has applied for the Top 100 Players of China's New Automotive Supply Chain. 

Photo credit: Senior Automation

Product: Port Unmanned and Cloud Control system

Description

By building a fully connected wireless network, SNIC realizes the comprehensive perception and intelligent scheduling of port transportation elements such as containers, transportation equipment, instruments, and personnel. At the same time, based on 5g mobile edge computing, video security monitoring, real-time data acquisition, remote disposal, and scheduling are carried out on the site. At the same time, through the application of automatic driving in the port area, the mode of loading, unloading, and transportation of goods in the port will be changed, and intelligent machinery will be promoted to replace labor.

Photo credit: Senior Automation

After a large number of experiments and trial operations, the driverless solution has been landed at two terminals, tested at seven terminals, and officially signed commercial operation orders, accumulating a large number of real operation scenarios/data.

Unique advantages

At present, automatic driving has six mainstream application scenarios in the field of commercial vehicles, including port scenarios, logistics parks, mining area scenarios, airport scenarios, trunk logistics, and terminal logistics. Because of its semi-closed and high degree of standardization, the port is regarded as one of the most potential scenarios for rapid digital transformation.

Different from other driverless application scenarios, port driverless has its own application environment and technical requirements.

First, in terms of intelligence, in the complex environment of people, vehicles, and things interwoven in the port, the unmanned truck is equipped with advanced technologies such as lidar, millimeter-wave radar, ultrasonic radar, high-definition camera, and satellite positioning module. In particular, the ultrasonic radar can detect all objects. Unlike lidar and millimeter-wave radar, they have their own advantages. They are more practical for mobile modes such as reversing, which is conducive to the environmental transportation of the port;

Second, in terms of networking, domestic port driverless truck basically adopts 5G network and v2x technology, which continuously strengthens the cooperative perception ability of vehicle end and road end, and realizes the interconnection between driverless truck and port automatic production equipment and system. At the same time, cloud computing and remote monitoring services can also be added to realize system real-time optimization, intelligent dispatching control, and remote driving, so as to provide a multi-dimensional guarantee for the safe operation of driverless trucks;

Third, technically, it is very different from AGV (automatic guided transport vehicle) and IGV (Intelligent guided transport vehicle). AGV needs to lay magnetic nails on the driving route, and the positioning accuracy of IGV is relatively poor. While driverless truck integrates the technical advantages, avoids the technical shortcomings of AGV and IGV, and saves more cost.

Therefore, unmanned container trucks are very important for container terminals. The horizontal transportation of the container terminal directly determines the comprehensive operation efficiency of a port. The Unmanned Container truck has innovated the horizontal transportation scheme of the terminal, greatly improved the working environment, reduced the working intensity, and solved the problems of easy fatigue and great potential safety hazards. The technical ability of the company's Si Nian intelligent driving team ranks first in the domestic port track, and it is estimated that it will reach 500 million / year in three years. The business model includes two directions: operation and sales. Among them, the operation is the only team that adopts this model in domestic port driverless track.

Application

The port plays an important role in national economic development. It belongs to the basic Department of the national economy. It is one of the important facilities for regional economic development. It is also an important supporting factor for the coastal provinces to realize the economic development strategy. Then, in the tide of global economic development, with the rapid development of modern science and technology, traditional ports have been difficult to meet the development needs of the international situation. If the transformation and upgrading have become an urgent problem. In January 2017, the Ministry of Transport issued the notice on carrying out smart port demonstration projects, decided to select a number of ports to carry out the construction of smart port demonstration projects, focusing on port smart logistics and dangerous goods safety management, and clearly proposed to give full play to the leading role of informatization and take Internet, Internet of things, big data, artificial intelligence and other information technologies as the construction foundation of smart port, Accelerate the process of port informatization and intellectualization, and promote the improvement of port quality and efficiency. Under the guidance and promotion of this national programmatic document and the promotion of the external environment, the construction of the smart port is becoming a new trend in the development of the whole port industry.

In the construction of a smart port, the horizontal transportation of containers is an important link. As an important means to connect shipping and other modes of transportation, the throughput of the container directly determines the capacity of the port. The efficiency and operation mode of container transportation has been paid much attention to by the international community. In recent years, the volume of logistics transportation has increased year by year, and it is imperative to improve transportation efficiency; Port throughput is the first to be challenged. The traditional method adopts the driver to drive the container truck between the wharf surface and the storage yard; However, due to the high requirements of vehicle control accuracy, poor working environment, and single work content, drivers are prone to make mistakes, resulting in transportation task failure and even safety accidents, which greatly affects the transportation efficiency.

Automatic driving technology can significantly improve the horizontal transportation capacity of containers in ports. In recent years, the rapid development of automatic driving has played an important role in improving traffic safety, improving traffic operation efficiency, realizing energy conservation and emission reduction, improving social benefits, and promoting the coordinated development of the automobile, electronics, transportation, and other fields. In 2020, according to the current development trend of automatic driving, the Chinese government put forward the innovative development strategy of automatic driving, took Chinese standard automatic driving as the development direction, took automatic driving power as the construction goal, and carried out systematic task deployment around the construction of automatic driving technology, so that the development of automatic driving in China lies on a new platform.

Prospect

The market space is large, on the one hand, because it has the fastest landing, income, and clear business model. It is expected to be commercially available on a large scale by the end of 2022. The investment in the field of unmanned driving is high and the return cycle is long. The actual operation in the port can not only experiment with technology, but also bring benefits, and can realize commercial operation in a short time.

On the other hand, in the field of self-driving commercial vehicles, port self-driving commercial vehicles can extend to trunk logistics from point to area in 1-2 years. Because they share hardware such as the chassis of commercial vehicles, they can also share in the engineering of vehicle regulations; At the same time, the large-scale commercial operation of the port can quickly accumulate and iterate algorithm ability, engineering ability, operation ability, and commercialization ability, and can extend to container trucks and trunk logistics in the future.

At the same time, with the maturity of technology and national policies, in the next 3-5 years, the company will also extend from the port to the trunk logistics transportation of the expressway, and the whole market can be expanded to a trillion level in the future.