Huawei, Tianjin Port build driverless, zero-carbon transportation solution

Huawei and Tianjin Port have jointly collaborated on a driverless, zero-carbon “vehicle-cloud synergy” horizontal transportation solution.

Huawei built an intelligent horizontal transport system at the terminal of Section C in the Beijiang Port Area of Tianjin Port.

The project has achieved Level 4 autonomous driving, enabling 76 intelligent guided vehicles (IGVs) in a fleet to collaborate efficiently. Huawei used cloud-based centralised dispatching to increase port-wide efficiency.

The company’s intelligent horizontal transport system has five key advantages. First, it offers global path planning. The company has designed a global path planning algorithm based on vehicle kinematics, which ensures that individual vehicles stay on their path.

The algorithm enables multiple IGVs to make turns smoothly, whether travelling in one or both directions. This is the key to safe and efficient multi-vehicle cooperation. The solution also features dynamic short path planning on the cloud, responding to many terminal operations and adjusting tasks in real time.

What does an intelligent, driverless, zero-carbon port look like? Huawei, in collaboration with partners, launched the "vehicle-cloud synergy" horizontal transportation solution to help Tianjin Port deploy 5G+L4 autonomous driving. #Huawei #SmartPorts #AutonomousDriving pic.twitter.com/iumckVtvZc

— Huawei Middle East (@Huawei_ME) November 2, 2022

The second advantage is its high-precision positioning. Huawei uses BeiDou, 5G, HD maps and roadside sensing assistance to assure high-precision lane-level positioning. As a result, 90 per cent of quay cranes successfully align on the first try, significantly improving operational efficiency.

Third, it developed the MDC intelligent driving platform. The upgraded Huawei MDC offers automotive-grade assurance, including ultimate computing power and long service life. It also simplifies O&M by providing standardised hardware.

The fourth advantage is core system integration. In addition to core service systems such as TOS, the brand’s intelligent horizontal transport system can quickly interconnect with other peripheral service systems. With its charging dispatching algorithm, IGVs are charged at the best possible time, preventing interruptions to fleet services.

The fifth advantage is cloud-vehicle decoupling. The brand decouples the cloud from vehicles through an open ecosystem. As a result, the solution can support a wide range of intelligent driving vehicle models, making it more cost-effective and easier to promote.

In the event of an IGV fault, an operator can remotely take over operations. The service takeover rate for a regular autonomous driving solution is about 5 per cent to 6 per cent. For Huawei’s solution, it’s less than 0.1 per cent, ensuring safer operations.

Intelligent, horizontal transport must meet three conditions. More than five operation lines must function simultaneously to support large vessels, while the system should be able to also manage large-scale fleets. Furthermore, it must support dispatching in complex port scenarios. Section C terminal in the Beijiang Port Area of Tianjin Port is the first smart terminal of its kind to deploy an intelligent horizontal transport system that performs large-scale, normalised operations.

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