HG S 57670 (old)

DGPS Positioning of Straddle Carriers (SC)

DGPS Positioning for Automatic Steering of SCs

With the, in general use, Global Positioning System (GPS) it is possible to determine a geographical position. The commonly used standard GPS provide an accuracy of ap­prox. 10 m. With the aid of additional equipment and under certain area conditions it is possible to achieve a geographic position with an accuracy of up to ±3 cm. Due to the achievable positional determination of approx. ±3 cm, it is possible to track a vehicles movements. Consequently by using a series of measurements along with the geographical positional data it is possible to determine the vehicles direction of travel and velocity.

With the aid of these functions it is possible to automatically steer an SC over a prede­termined route within the container yard. This means, that apart from the free movabil­ity that the rubber tired vehicles provide, they, like the rail mounted vehicles can be used within the container storage area without disrupting the drivers attentiveness, with the unnecessary requirement to control the tracking and manually steer the SC. A special advantage of this system is that for both functions there is absolutely no re­quirement to mount equipment within the track surface of the container yard.

All these points serve to aid the operational safety and therefore remove some of the stress placed on the driver, which in turn reduces the error rate. A looped memory stores all relevant information so that in the event of a disruption with the systems func­tion or during testing, a quick and easy error diagnoses is available. For special or emergency uses all these functions are manually operable so that a complete opera­tional shut down can be avoided.

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