The Internet of Things System to Prevent Gantry Crane Collisions

The development of radioelectronic systems and information technology affected the development of logistics and cargo carriage all over the world. The capacity of continuous position control using navigation and planning control helped accelerate cargo delivery operations. However, accidents at sorting stations significantly increase goods delivery times resulting in large economic losses. The introduction of industrial Internet of Things systems to automate and control sorting, unloading, and loading is one of the solutions to this problem. In this article, the authors review the possibility of integrating industrial Internet of Things solutions to prevent gantry crane collisions at soring stations during high humidity and fog. The authors compare the existing gantry crate collision prevention systems. During this work, some hardware and software solutions have been developed to detect obstacles in the crane's way and prevent emergencies. The information about obstacles is transmitted over a radio channel to the crane control module. The visualization of obstacles in the crane's way is implemented using a MQTT server. A built-in temperature and humidity sensor helped reduce the distance-to-object measurement error. The experiments on a laboratory prototype confirmed the efficiency of using industrial Internet of Things platforms for the prevention of gantry crane collisions.