The rainy season in Guinea, West Africa, came unexpectedly. The driver of the stacker reclaimer at Maribaya Port had just finished a shift of work. When he climbed off the equipment, his work clothes were already soaked in sweat and his shoes were covered in reddish brown mud. In this port, which is responsible for the annual transportation of 60 million tons of iron ore, in order to ensure uninterrupted operation of personnel and machines, each large stacker reclaimer must be equipped with a driver and operated in three shifts. However, the year-round high temperature, high humidity, and dust not only test the will of workers, but also put a sword hanging over safety production. Nowadays, the intelligent transformation from Shandong Port Technology Group is quietly changing the operational ecology here.

Say goodbye to high-risk manual operations

For a long time, the yard of Maribaya Port has relied on traditional manual machine operations. This decentralized work mode not only limits efficiency, but also makes it difficult to cope with complex environmental challenges. The mud during the rainy season and dust during the dry season pose high safety risks for frontline operations. At the same time, the arbitrariness of manual operations has led to chaotic inventory management, difficulty in coordinating multiple devices, and extensive energy consumption control. Traditional models are no longer able to support the refined operation needs of such a large volume of bulk cargo ports. Faced with this dilemma, Yinghai Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Shandong Port Technology Group, has brought a turning point. Their independently developed unmanned automatic control system for stacker reclaimer has officially entered the implementation stage, marking the first time that China's smart port solution has taken root in the core supporting hub of the Simandou iron mine project in Guinea, Africa.

Building a fully chain intelligent closed-loop system

The core of the unmanned centralized control solution for the full stack domestically produced stacker reclaimer that has been implemented this time lies in intelligent human like perception and control. The R&D team has abandoned simple mechanical substitution and instead adopted self-developed humanoid active 3D multi-source machine vision fusion perception technology, combined with a self-learning operation control brain, to tailor an upgrade path for the port. This system completely breaks the information silo of a single device, fully integrating systems such as belt conveyor, environmental protection and dust suppression, port MES scheduling, and safety protection interlocking. Now, the equipment can automatically receive production instructions for stacking, transportation, and loading, building a new digital closed-loop control mode for the entire chain of raw material storage and transportation. This not only solves the urgent need for Maribaya Port, but also marks an important milestone for domestic intelligent handling technology for bulk materials to enter the world's top overseas resource infrastructure projects.

Establish a benchmark for overseas output

With the full implementation of the project, the transformation will be disruptive. It is expected that the number of high-risk on-site workers in the yard will decrease by more than 90%, and operators will be liberated from harsh environments and centralized in comfortable remote control rooms. A single person can simultaneously control multiple large stacker reclaimers, ensuring constant operational efficiency 24/7. On the basis of stable guarantee of 60 million tons of annual external transportation capacity, the system will also bring multiple benefits such as safety improvement, material loss reduction, energy conservation and carbon reduction. In fact, this is not the first time that Shandong Port Technology has gone global. Its independently controllable "Tiangong · Zhiyu" equipment intelligent solution has been successfully applied to multiple overseas large-scale mining and port projects in Russia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and other countries. In the future, Shangang Technology will take Maribaya Port as a model, continuously expand advanced scenarios such as predictive operation and maintenance of equipment throughout its lifecycle, and promote the one-stop output of Chinese intelligent equipment, industrial standards, and digital solutions worldwide.Editor/Yang Meiling