Essentials of Autonomous Operations

November 13th, 2020

This is a copy of an article by Chris Mason, VP of Sales – EMEA, Rajant Corporation for Port Technology.

Rajant attended the 2017 TOC Europe Conference in Amsterdam as an Exhibitor. A fellow exhibitor was an organisation called DGWorld, exhibiting leading-edge capabilities in autonomous ground and aerial vehicles. At the time, there were relatively few organizations able to demonstrate this capability, resulting in a great deal of media and attendee interest in the solutions.

Ever vigilant to the requirements for communications in such an environment, Rajant made contact and entered discussions about their solution and requirements for 100% connectivity in one of their principal target markets – container ports.

Fast forward to 2020, and the announcement from DP World, UAE Region in Dubai contracting with DGWorld to provide a fleet of Autonomous In-Terminal Vehicles (AITV’s) in their immense Jebel Ali Terminal in Dubai. Between 2016 and 2020, the two organisations underwent a whole series of tests and iterations of the solution, DGWorld developing and refining their autonomous system.

Exclusive interview with Robert Schena, CEO, Rajant here.

Whilst the intelligence on the vehicle allows navigation around the complex container terminal environment, it needs tasks communicated to it, location and condition of vehicle monitoring, and in exceptional circumstances, remote control of the vehicle. All these tasks require 100% low latency connectivity between and around all the TEU, stacks of steel boxes impenetrable to wireless communications. DGWorld selected Rajant Kinetic Mesh industrial networking to deliver the essential communications, with Rajant BreadCrumb units mounted on each AITV and around the terminal to ensure 100% connectivity.

Rajant’s attendance at the TOC Events and Port Technology International Events around the world is predicated on experiences of listening to Container Terminal Operators tales of poor communication, patchy connectivity, difficulties in the scalability of the network, concerns around security and the possibilities of unauthorised access and the inability to ensure 100% connectivity for their journey to digitisation.

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