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Hundred-Tonne Robots That Help Keep New Zealand Running [video]

155 points by protomyth 8y ago

masklinn 8y ago
That's a pretty cool "physical-world" use of the best kind of automation: automating the mind-numbing repetitive bits so you can get more people on the fiddlier stuff.
- lopmotr 8y ago
  That's a lucky coincidence for now, not the reason for doing it. Historically, automation did the opposite and put human assembly line workers on mind-numbing repetitive tasks. Robots these days often do more skilled tasks like welding, painting, and machining while humans do simple assembly. The interviewee in the video suggests that the balance could shift in the future too, presumably to eliminate all the human crane and straddle-carrier operators.
ch 8y ago
Really like how they minimize wear to the pavement by just shifting the location of where the robot operates each time through a cycle.
- Max_aaa 8y ago
  This is basically pavement wear-leveling. Wonder how much more life they can get from this. I would also imagine the next generation could include using thinner pavement where they know that the robots would never go through, as this should drastically save on material.
  - rtkwe 8y ago
    I'd say probably a lot depending on just how much they move the containers around. For an off the cuff calculation considering just the wear from containers we can take the support pads as being 6 inches (larger than real life) there's ~78 pad lengths between it and the far end pad that are untouched in an unmoving stack and if we move it sideways as well there's ~14 so that's just shy of 1100 spots each pad could rest that aren't used under a static container stack. This does ignore the wear from the tires of the movers but it's a quick illustration of all the space underneath the containers that can be wasted.
  - Haga 8y ago
    This planning has hidden costs for other operations though. At my university they where not allowed to move certain equipment whole or even at all through some corridors, as that sort of thinking on the new building had rendered it basically unsafe for usage. If in doubt over engineer. When handling use cases be in doubt.
- aerophilic 8y ago
  I was lucky enough to tour the equivalent facility in Australia. They learned pavement wearing the “hard way” realizing the robots were much more consistent than humans. As such they would actually shift the entire facility a little bit each day (as movement allowed). One thing we have barely started uncovering are these “2nd order” problems that come with automation.
- stubish 8y ago
  I first heard about this with plane automatic landing systems, where the planes would always touch down at the same spot on the tarmac. Randomization needed to be added to keep the tarmac from cracking for longer.
  - zeropoint46 8y ago
    yes, I spent some time on google trying to find the article but I guess my googlefoo is failing me today. However I do remember it was the autoland system developed by McDonnell Douglas on the MD-11. They had to add some small randomization to keep if from always touching down on the same part of the pavement all the time.
- richardw 8y ago
  That'll be a useful technique for autonomous trucks and roads, because we're going to have the same issue writ large. As long as they don't get too close to other traffic because they're focused on wear leveling.
tlb 8y ago
It's interesting how localization is still among the biggest challenges, despite some great new technology like UWB (for instance, https://www.decawave.com/product/dwm1000-module/ https://www.decawave.com/product/dwm1000-module/). Visual SLAM is obviously difficult in an environment where most of the visual mass (containers) moves.
- cr0sh 8y ago
  From what I understand, in robotics SLAM is still one of those areas of development that still has a lot of room for innovation, if you have the chops for it.
- pj_mukh 8y ago
  They are smart to use specialized sensors here (not sure which spectrum) to triangulate. You can get a consumer version of this in some floor cleaners now! [1] [1] https://www.amazon.com/d/Robotic-Vacuums/Mint-Automatic-Floor-Cleaner-4200/B00408PCEW https://www.amazon.com/d/Robotic-Vacuums/Mint-Automatic-Floo...
- snops 8y ago
  After some digging, it appears the particular tech they are using is Locata[1], which uses a time of flight based positioning system. To deal with the terrible multipath problems in a site full of metal boxes, a phased array approach is used to so the receiver antenna is directional and electronically steerable. Locata have a clever way of doing this called vRay [2]. This uses time-slicing rather than many simultaneous receivers to cut costs, and you can see this ball of smaller antennas on top in several shots. In contrast, the ultrawideband (UWB) tech you have linked uses the frequency specific nature of multipath to average out the error, but as UWB is over a range of frequencies used for other purposes, it is very limited in legal TX power, and so I suspect it would have range issues in this application. [1] http://www.locata.com/technology/locata-tech-explained/locatas-inventions/ http://www.locata.com/technology/locata-tech-explained/locat... [2] http://www.locata.com/article/vray-antenna/ http://www.locata.com/article/vray-antenna/
chime 8y ago
I was wondering why they used EM instead of HF audio for positioning. Sub-nano must require expensive clocks and very tight tolerances. They need centimeter level precision not sub-mm. Maybe the speed of sound varies over 100m ranges? Why not do embedded magnets or wires in the road? I don’t mean to judge their decision, just wondering how they settled on EM for positioning.
- tlb 8y ago
  Sound localization is directly affected by wind, because the propagation speed is relative to the moving air mass. A wind moving at 0.05 Mach (35 mph, not unlikely in an exposed port) will scale the distance measurements by 5 meters over 100 meters.
- tcmb 8y ago
  Could they do the positional shifting to prevent wear and tear of the asphalt surface with embedded magnets or wires?
  - toss1 8y ago
    Seems like no problem, if they merely designed it so that instead of using the embedded positioning devices as cargo placement markers, they used them provide accurate carrier locations, then tell the carriers to put the cargo in different positions as needed.
- toxik 8y ago
  I’d say having landmarks (like literally spray marks on the land) and wheel encoders should be much more robust. Perhaps also with some ToF system as a secondary source of positioning. Come to think of it, could the ”we’re only semi automated” be a way around the unions?
  - cr0sh 8y ago
    > I’d say having landmarks (like literally spray marks on the land) Such marks could wear away, or be obscured by spills, debris, or rain. Ideally, they should be included, along with other sensor systems for positioning, just to give another set of data points for the localization algorithm to work with. Practically, though, they probably aren't, because it raises costs both for development and maintenance of the systems.
sandermvanvliet 8y ago
In the port of Rotterdam there has been a highly automated container terminal since 1993: the ECT Delta Terminal. See https://myservices.ect.nl/Terminals/rotterdamterminals/deltaterminal/Pages/ProvenTechnology.aspx https://myservices.ect.nl/Terminals/rotterdamterminals/delta...
Footkerchief 8y ago
The headline's referent in non-video form: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straddle_carrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straddle_carrier
- tialaramex 8y ago
  But note that this video is talking about "A strads" that is, automated straddle carriers, all the "boring shuffling" is done by automated carriers that can find a container in the yard, and do the tedious work of taking all the containers on top of it off one at a time, then taking it where it needs to go and finally if necessary putting the others back. But meanwhile humans are bringing new containers into the yard with conventional carriers, at least for now.
zachguo 8y ago
Wondering why they chose straddle carriers over automated cranes and trucks which seem to be more common in other automated container terminals.
- masklinn 8y ago
  They were already using straddle carriers, and a mix of cranes and trucks would probably require a larger footprint.
cpeterso 8y ago
British mining company Rio Tinto has 73 416-ton autonomous trucks transporting iron ore 24 hours a day in Australia. The human team overseeing the robots work 750 miles away. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603170/mining-24-hours-a-day-with-robots/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603170/mining-24-hours-a-... (2016)
- guidedlight 8y ago
  Rio Tinto is a dual headquartered British-Australian company
- djrobstep 8y ago
  They've got thieving from the Australian public down to a fine art, gotta hand it to em.
  - stephen_g 8y ago
    It is insane how little royalties we impose on the big resources companies. But at least Rio Tinto and BHP pay a decent amount of company tax. It’s the offshore owned ones that pay almost no tax (Glencore, Chevron, British Gas, Exxon, Energy Australia, Peabody, Chevron, etc.). Investigative journalist Michael West has a good rundown of the top 40 companies that manage to make huge amounts of income but manage to reduce their taxable income to crazily low levels to avoid paying tax - https://www.michaelwest.com.au/tax-dodgers/ https://www.michaelwest.com.au/tax-dodgers/ - a lot of resource/energy companies there!
    - BLKNSLVR 8y ago
      Just going further and further off-topic here, but it's so depressing contrasting that list against what Australian politicians actually treat as important issues in regards to the Australian economy. But then, what would one expect when the Australian Prime Minister (at the time) was one of the names in the Panama Papers listing investors making use of complex offshore shell companies registered in tax havens for the purposes of avoiding local tax law. Also, Foxtel! $0 in tax on $6 billion total income. I guess that covers all the Australian pirates' share of GoT downloads.
nabla9 8y ago
The robot in question is Konecranes A-STRAD

155 points by protomyth 8y ago

That's a pretty cool "physical-world" use of the best kind of automation: automating the mind-numbing repetitive bits so you can get more people on the fiddlier stuff.

lopmotr 8y ago
That's a lucky coincidence for now, not the reason for doing it. Historically, automation did the opposite and put human assembly line workers on mind-numbing repetitive tasks. Robots these days often do more skilled tasks like welding, painting, and machining while humans do simple assembly. The interviewee in the video suggests that the balance could shift in the future too, presumably to eliminate all the human crane and straddle-carrier operators.

ch 8y ago

Really like how they minimize wear to the pavement by just shifting the location of where the robot operates each time through a cycle.

Max_aaa 8y ago
This is basically pavement wear-leveling. Wonder how much more life they can get from this. I would also imagine the next generation could include using thinner pavement where they know that the robots would never go through, as this should drastically save on material.
- rtkwe 8y ago
  I'd say probably a lot depending on just how much they move the containers around. For an off the cuff calculation considering just the wear from containers we can take the support pads as being 6 inches (larger than real life) there's ~78 pad lengths between it and the far end pad that are untouched in an unmoving stack and if we move it sideways as well there's ~14 so that's just shy of 1100 spots each pad could rest that aren't used under a static container stack. This does ignore the wear from the tires of the movers but it's a quick illustration of all the space underneath the containers that can be wasted.
- Haga 8y ago
  This planning has hidden costs for other operations though. At my university they where not allowed to move certain equipment whole or even at all through some corridors, as that sort of thinking on the new building had rendered it basically unsafe for usage. If in doubt over engineer. When handling use cases be in doubt.
aerophilic 8y ago
I was lucky enough to tour the equivalent facility in Australia. They learned pavement wearing the “hard way” realizing the robots were much more consistent than humans. As such they would actually shift the entire facility a little bit each day (as movement allowed). One thing we have barely started uncovering are these “2nd order” problems that come with automation.
stubish 8y ago
I first heard about this with plane automatic landing systems, where the planes would always touch down at the same spot on the tarmac. Randomization needed to be added to keep the tarmac from cracking for longer.
- zeropoint46 8y ago
  yes, I spent some time on google trying to find the article but I guess my googlefoo is failing me today. However I do remember it was the autoland system developed by McDonnell Douglas on the MD-11. They had to add some small randomization to keep if from always touching down on the same part of the pavement all the time.
richardw 8y ago
That'll be a useful technique for autonomous trucks and roads, because we're going to have the same issue writ large. As long as they don't get too close to other traffic because they're focused on wear leveling.

tlb 8y ago

It's interesting how localization is still among the biggest challenges, despite some great new technology like UWB (for instance, https://www.decawave.com/product/dwm1000-module/ https://www.decawave.com/product/dwm1000-module/). Visual SLAM is obviously difficult in an environment where most of the visual mass (containers) moves.

cr0sh 8y ago
From what I understand, in robotics SLAM is still one of those areas of development that still has a lot of room for innovation, if you have the chops for it.
pj_mukh 8y ago
They are smart to use specialized sensors here (not sure which spectrum) to triangulate. You can get a consumer version of this in some floor cleaners now! [1] [1] https://www.amazon.com/d/Robotic-Vacuums/Mint-Automatic-Floor-Cleaner-4200/B00408PCEW https://www.amazon.com/d/Robotic-Vacuums/Mint-Automatic-Floo...
snops 8y ago
After some digging, it appears the particular tech they are using is Locata[1], which uses a time of flight based positioning system. To deal with the terrible multipath problems in a site full of metal boxes, a phased array approach is used to so the receiver antenna is directional and electronically steerable. Locata have a clever way of doing this called vRay [2]. This uses time-slicing rather than many simultaneous receivers to cut costs, and you can see this ball of smaller antennas on top in several shots. In contrast, the ultrawideband (UWB) tech you have linked uses the frequency specific nature of multipath to average out the error, but as UWB is over a range of frequencies used for other purposes, it is very limited in legal TX power, and so I suspect it would have range issues in this application. [1] http://www.locata.com/technology/locata-tech-explained/locatas-inventions/ http://www.locata.com/technology/locata-tech-explained/locat... [2] http://www.locata.com/article/vray-antenna/ http://www.locata.com/article/vray-antenna/

chime 8y ago

I was wondering why they used EM instead of HF audio for positioning. Sub-nano must require expensive clocks and very tight tolerances. They need centimeter level precision not sub-mm. Maybe the speed of sound varies over 100m ranges? Why not do embedded magnets or wires in the road? I don’t mean to judge their decision, just wondering how they settled on EM for positioning.

tlb 8y ago
Sound localization is directly affected by wind, because the propagation speed is relative to the moving air mass. A wind moving at 0.05 Mach (35 mph, not unlikely in an exposed port) will scale the distance measurements by 5 meters over 100 meters.
tcmb 8y ago
Could they do the positional shifting to prevent wear and tear of the asphalt surface with embedded magnets or wires?
- toss1 8y ago
  Seems like no problem, if they merely designed it so that instead of using the embedded positioning devices as cargo placement markers, they used them provide accurate carrier locations, then tell the carriers to put the cargo in different positions as needed.
toxik 8y ago
I’d say having landmarks (like literally spray marks on the land) and wheel encoders should be much more robust. Perhaps also with some ToF system as a secondary source of positioning. Come to think of it, could the ”we’re only semi automated” be a way around the unions?
- cr0sh 8y ago
  > I’d say having landmarks (like literally spray marks on the land) Such marks could wear away, or be obscured by spills, debris, or rain. Ideally, they should be included, along with other sensor systems for positioning, just to give another set of data points for the localization algorithm to work with. Practically, though, they probably aren't, because it raises costs both for development and maintenance of the systems.

sandermvanvliet 8y ago

In the port of Rotterdam there has been a highly automated container terminal since 1993: the ECT Delta Terminal. See https://myservices.ect.nl/Terminals/rotterdamterminals/deltaterminal/Pages/ProvenTechnology.aspx https://myservices.ect.nl/Terminals/rotterdamterminals/delta...

Footkerchief 8y ago

The headline's referent in non-video form: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straddle_carrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straddle_carrier

tialaramex 8y ago
But note that this video is talking about "A strads" that is, automated straddle carriers, all the "boring shuffling" is done by automated carriers that can find a container in the yard, and do the tedious work of taking all the containers on top of it off one at a time, then taking it where it needs to go and finally if necessary putting the others back. But meanwhile humans are bringing new containers into the yard with conventional carriers, at least for now.

zachguo 8y ago

Wondering why they chose straddle carriers over automated cranes and trucks which seem to be more common in other automated container terminals.

masklinn 8y ago
They were already using straddle carriers, and a mix of cranes and trucks would probably require a larger footprint.

cpeterso 8y ago

British mining company Rio Tinto has 73 416-ton autonomous trucks transporting iron ore 24 hours a day in Australia. The human team overseeing the robots work 750 miles away. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603170/mining-24-hours-a-day-with-robots/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603170/mining-24-hours-a-... (2016)

guidedlight 8y ago
Rio Tinto is a dual headquartered British-Australian company
djrobstep 8y ago
They've got thieving from the Australian public down to a fine art, gotta hand it to em.
- stephen_g 8y ago
  It is insane how little royalties we impose on the big resources companies. But at least Rio Tinto and BHP pay a decent amount of company tax. It’s the offshore owned ones that pay almost no tax (Glencore, Chevron, British Gas, Exxon, Energy Australia, Peabody, Chevron, etc.). Investigative journalist Michael West has a good rundown of the top 40 companies that manage to make huge amounts of income but manage to reduce their taxable income to crazily low levels to avoid paying tax - https://www.michaelwest.com.au/tax-dodgers/ https://www.michaelwest.com.au/tax-dodgers/ - a lot of resource/energy companies there!
  - BLKNSLVR 8y ago
    Just going further and further off-topic here, but it's so depressing contrasting that list against what Australian politicians actually treat as important issues in regards to the Australian economy. But then, what would one expect when the Australian Prime Minister (at the time) was one of the names in the Panama Papers listing investors making use of complex offshore shell companies registered in tax havens for the purposes of avoiding local tax law. Also, Foxtel! $0 in tax on $6 billion total income. I guess that covers all the Australian pirates' share of GoT downloads.

nabla9 8y ago

The robot in question is Konecranes A-STRAD