Huawei Helps Tianjin Port Realize 5G and L4 Autonomous Driving
Huawei Connect 2022 is being held in Shenzhen from November 7 to 9. During the event, the firm’s Intelligent Corps of Highway and Waterway Ports made its first public appearance, with a sub-forum entitled “ICT New Technology Enables Smart Ports and Releases Digital Productivity of the Industry.”
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Traditional ports are vulnerable to severe dry weather or sudden increases in throughput, leading to congestion or closures. The Tianjin Port, as one of the top 10 ports in the world, has an annual container throughput of 20 million TEUs and more than 20,000 employees. The characteristics of this typically labor-intensive industry require it to face the demand of technological upgrades. At the conference, an official from the Tianjin Port demonstrated the practical achievements of Huawei’s smart port technology application and ecological construction.
On the port’s visitor platform at the container terminal at Section C of Tianjin Port, onlookers can see that container cranes operate automatically as unmanned electric container trucks come and go. Remotely controlled quay cranes stably pick up containers that are loaded with cargo from cargo ships, and load these containers onto unmanned electric container trucks. Under the guidance of China’s BeiDou navigation satellite system, the container trucks go to the automatic locking/unlocking stations, according to the optimal driving route calculated in real time, to unlock the containers, then drive to the container yard. The whole task is completed through one interconnected process.
The Tianjin Port and Huawei have previously engaged in other areas of cooperation. In 2020, the Tianjin Port, Huawei and China Mobile jointly set up a “5G + smart port” special team. According to the actual business scenario, they take advantage of the advantages of ultra-large broadband, ultra-low delay, wide coverage and high reliability of 5G network, combined with new ICT technologies such as AI, cloud computing and Internet of Things, launching the unmanned automatic driving and 5G remote control scheme of vehicle-road cooperation L4 autonomous driving solution. This helps with the automation transfer of the port, improves operational efficiency, reduces overall operation energy consumption and makes port operations safer.
On October 17, 2021, the world’s first “smart zero-carbon” port, the container terminal at Section C of the Tianjin Port, was officially put into operation. It has achieved a series of global firsts, including large-scale commercial use of ultra-L4 driverless, the “5G+BeiDou” integration of ubiquitous intelligence, self-sufficiency in green electricity and zero carbon emissions, and more. This achievement provides a blueprint for other parts of the world to build intelligent and low-carbon ports.
Yue Kun, CTO of Huawei’s Intelligent Corps of Highway and Waterway Ports, said that no one doubts that the newly built ports should be automated and intelligent, and the automation and intelligent transformation of existing ports has also been put on the agenda. Using 5G and unmanned intelligent guided transport vehicles (IGVs) to realize smart transportation of ports has become the most important choice for container ports.
During this conference, Huawei also jointly released smart port solutions such as intelligent gates, intelligent tallying and F5G remote control automation, as well as other smart port solutions.
