Page 8 - Port of Hamburg | Port of Hamburg Magazine 1.2022

■ CONTAINER WORLDS
Men and machines: Interacting instead of competing
Size makes seaports suitable for far-reaching automation. The Container Terminal Altenwerder (CTA) in the Port of Hamburg is one of the pioneers of digitalization.
At the CTA – HHLA Container Terminal Altenwerder rail sidings, the portal of rail crane 04 extends over and beyond the nine fully occupied tracks. Weighing 500 tons, this piece of technology shifts itself into the correct position above a still half-empty, stationary train below. A steel box weighing several tons hangs from its rotating trolley. This must be lowered precise- ly on to a flat container railcar. The castings at the cor- ners of the container slip into the four corner fittings on this railcar.
The rail crane performs very well here, feels Jan Kämena. This CTA operative is sitting in the container gantry crane cabin. He’s supervising a test concern- ing automation of rail handling at CTA. Even on enter- ing service in June 2002, this Port of Hamburg termi- nal was the most highly automated in the world. CTA remains a model project, and the rail gantry crane aims to advance its development a step further. With support from the Federal German IHATEC – Innova- tive Port Technologies program, CTA’s developers aim to find solutions enabling men and machines to inter- act in automated operation.
30 REAL-TIME SCANNERS ENSURE SAFETY
To enable the facility to spot people and vehicles, it is equipped with 30 real-time scanners that can handle up to 26 million pixels per second. These produce 3D scans of the relevant environment, constantly match- ing a piece of software with the correct state. Should it spot unknown objects, it stops the crane.
Located in CTA’s office block, in future remote con- trollers will each be supervising and controlling sever- al rail gantry cranes. The great majority of standard-
ized handling processes at the station will then be automated. Also involved in the project is iSAM, a specialist in automation technology much in demand worldwide, and since 2020 part of the HHLA Group. “When we opted to get together with HHLA, it was precisely alliances of this kind that were our strategic aim,” explains Bernd Mann, iSAM’s chairman. The company’s focus has so far been on equipping mines and bulk cargo terminals. In the Port of Hamburg, Hansaport as the largest German coal/ore terminal is one of the model projects for the company, which is based at Mülheim on the Ruhr. After bulk cargoes, containers are now firmly in the sights of the iSAM specialists.
HIGHS COSTS
Their size makes seaports more suitable for scaling than smaller rail and inland waterway vessel termi- nals, says Mann. Given the immense expense, auto- mation only pays off for larger facilities. “Only a small number of technical limits restrict our solutions, but there are quite a few economic ones,” says the iSAM supremo.
As CTA demonstrates, ports are no laggards in the worldwide mega-trend towards automation. Yet some other logistics areas have already taken this still fur- ther. Intra-logistics is one example, with its gigantic
Bernd Mann
CEO of iSAM AG
08 | Port of Hamburg Magazine | June 2022
© HHLA Wolfgang Heumer