What is a real port unmanned card? Port circle

"How to use products to truly define a port unmanned truck? As autonomous driving entered various scenarios, the industry began to discuss how to gradually' remove the safety officer'. As early as 20 17, Xijing Technology had a bold idea-completely canceling the Q-Truck human cab. The leap of this step directly allows us to see the real production value that driverless driving gives to the industry. "

In recent years, regardless of the technology industry or the capital market, the enthusiasm for autonomous driving has actually experienced three topics: Robotaxi, autonomous driving in trunk logistics, and autonomous driving in specific scenarios. Although the popularity remains the same, the focus has shifted from the initial enthusiasm for Robotaxi to the pursuit of trunk logistics, and then to the specific scene of landing faster and realizing commercial returns earlier.

In specific scenarios, the port is regarded as one of the most potential scenarios for rapid digital transformation because of its semi-enclosed and high standardization, and various forces from inside and outside the industry have jointly accelerated this process.

For the port, can the entry of new forces representing the most cutting-edge technology really help the industry subvert the production model? Especially the most concerned unmanned driving, how will it accelerate the process of port automation?

Recently, Westwell has taken the lead in helping Thai users of Hutchison Port to realize the operation of the world's first artificial intelligence hybrid truck terminal, which has achieved the work efficiency of manual drivers. It may be a case worth studying to connect the whole port production link with unmanned transportation capacity in series.

Self-driving new species without cab

"For Xijing, the original intention of unmanned driving is to solve the pain point of horizontal transportation of port containers; Instead of autonomous driving for autonomous driving, the market is the first driving force because of the orientation of any technology. "

The port is a scene where the operation mode basically depends on manpower. The existing manual operation not only has potential safety hazards, but also costs more and more.

In 20 16, the earliest product of Xijing technology was the AI system to help the port realize intelligent tally. However, in the continuous communication and practice with customers, the demand for autonomous driving has become increasingly prominent. Container trucks in ports with large throughput usually need to run 24 hours, and the port area needs a large number of experienced drivers. The labor cost of many ports accounts for 70% of the total cost.

At the same time, the traditional port is a high-risk place for safety accidents because it involves aerial work and fatigue driving. Truck drivers are tired of high-intensity, high-pressure and full-load work, and the contradiction is prominent, which directly affects the efficiency and safety of port transportation.

In recent years, it is common for container truck drivers at home and abroad to recruit workers. Especially under the epidemic situation, the heads of port logistics enterprises in many places said that the number of container truck drivers has not recovered to the pre-epidemic level, which greatly affected the operation of port logistics.

At the end of 20 16, Xijing technology set up an autonomous driving team. 20 18 18, Xijing technology completed the first case of unmanned card collection at Zhuhai port. At that time, although the truck still had a cab, the cab was empty during actual operation, and the vehicle independently completed the whole process from the freight yard to Joan's loading and unloading box according to established procedures.

During the first-line test of the terminal, the team had a deeper understanding of the production process of the port and experienced the hard work of the first-line drivers. Engaged in autonomous driving research in the industry, if the final vehicle still needs debugging personnel or safety officers, not only the front-line personnel can't really get rid of the original hard work, but also the use cost of the vehicle can't be reduced. How to ensure the safety of the superimposed personnel? With this idea, generate has completely achieved the goal of "no driver's seat", and the whole team has repeatedly scrutinized and polished the underlying logic and technical details of product design.

2065438+September 2008, the Qomolo self-driving brand of Xijing was officially released, and the full-time unmanned new energy heavy truck concept car Q-Truck was launched. This truly unmanned autonomous driving new species has made the industry see a brand-new product definition.

In 20 19, Q-Truck realized engineering mass production, and used the fourth-generation steer-by-wire products independently developed for the first time. In 2020, Q-Truck production cars began to go overseas.

The world's first artificial intelligence container truck mixed terminal.

At present, Xijing Q-Truck truck is operating normally at Linchaban Port in Thailand and the second phase terminal of Khalifa Port in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Q-Truck is at Abu Dhabi Pier in Zhongyuan Sea.

Among them, the Q-Truck team in Linchaban, Thailand is the first unmanned team in the world to realize the mixed operation of manned and unmanned, and has entered the daily operation. From 5438+00 in June 2020 to May this year, the unmanned truck fleet composed of Xijing Q-Truck has safely operated more than 23,243TEU containers in Linchaban, Thailand.

This fleet has helped Hutchison Port in Thailand realize the operation and management of the world's first non-isolated mixed fleet, covering all ship types including mother ships. With its super-long endurance, it can continuously participate in the loading and unloading tasks of about 4,000 boxes of goods with the largest ship type, and its work efficiency is equivalent to the average labor efficiency of 26Move/ hour, and it is still rising.

In addition to the seaport, Q-Truck has also expanded in other logistics scenarios such as dry ports, and this year Q-Truck has also been commercialized in Xinjiang dry ports.

Really liberate "people" and realize unmanned operation.

On the road of port automation and unmanned driving, the research and development direction of Xijing is clear from the beginning. The product design takes unmanned driving as the ultimate goal and strengthens the cab-free scheme. It is expected that Q-Truck will be used to define the real port unmanned operation card, which will completely solve the productivity problem caused by labor shortage in ports and other scenes.

At the same time, this design can also reduce the cost of the whole vehicle. Compared with other automatic card collection, Q-Truck can load more batteries, computing units and other hardware, and can also make personalized intelligent settings according to specified scenarios. It is reported that in the future, Xijing will also consider canceling the induction bin and tractor.

Taking "no one" as the starting point, there are extremely high requirements for the safety and fluency of Xijing Q car, which is the strong technical and systematic confidence of Xijing team and also shows the full trust and confidence of Xijing customers in Q car.

In order to achieve this goal, the product design of Q-Truck not only considers the logic of the underlying architecture of each module of the system, but also considers the stability and reliability of the system when multiple modules are coupled.

The in-depth understanding and study of the port scene enables the Xijing team to learn from many operational details in port transportation and integrate them into product design. "We have done a lot of simulations and considered various unexpected problems that may occur in the port scene.

At present, the Q-Truck truck in Xijing has realized the deep coupling of the port scene. For example, under the quayside bridge and yard bridge, the centering error between spreader lock and container lock hole is less than 3cm, and the accuracy is close to 100%. Wireless sensors can achieve 360-degree trailer coverage without blind spots.

The fleet management system FMS(Fleet Management System) independently developed by Xijing can effectively manage the fleet in the port scene, perform one-to-one task matching and reduce the idle rate of vehicles. Real-time positioning monitoring, mastering the situation of vehicles and goods.

The fleet system can manage multiple unmanned trucks at the same time, and even realize the mixed operation of unmanned vehicles and manned vehicles, which is not available in general autonomous driving companies that do bicycle intelligence.

Consolidate advantages overseas and blossom more at home.

A few days ago, Xijing Technology also helped Tianjin Port and Qingdao Port respectively. Flat-panel unmanned vehicles equipped with Xijing Technology Autopilot System have participated in the actual commercial unmanned driving projects of Tianjin Port Area C Automation Terminal and Qingdao Port respectively. Driven by science and technology, they presented gifts for July 1 day.

The future will never come until people are ready. When the first "cabless" Q truck in Xijing landed, the real future of port automation officially kicked off.