The CoboTank has arrived
17 December 2024 11:00
The scaled demonstrator of the collaborative robot to support the loading process of inland tankers is now ready for test series at the HaFoLa test centre.
Good things come to those who wait: the scaled demonstrator of the so-called CoboTank, a collaborative robot to support the loading process of inland tankers, was delivered to the DST at the end of the year and set up in the test centre for innovative port and handling technologies. In the presence of other consortium partners of the joint project funded by the Innovative Port Technologies (IHATEC II) research programme of the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport Affairs (BMDV), the overall acceptance was completed and the demonstrator handed over. The demonstrator was presented to all partners at a meeting of the partners on 17 December 2024 at the DST.
The CoboTank addresses three essential process steps before the hose connection between the tank farm and the inland tanker is established before the actual loading process, namely the automated pick-up of the product hose, its automated rough positioning on the ship's side and the power-assisted fine positioning of the product hose on the tank connection by a member of the ship's crew. The use of the CoboTank in this process step reduces the number of personnel required from two people on board and one or two people on land to just one person on board (as well as remote monitoring on land).
Once the demonstrator has been accepted, the test station can now be completed. It consists of the demonstrator of the CoboTank on a scale of 1:10, a model ship including a tanker section and an operating station for the robot for power-assisted fine positioning of the product hose. This means that the new process sequence in question can be further developed at the test station in HaFoLa's Port Automation Lab and demonstrated in the near future.
A second station is also planned for the near future, which will allow the handling process to be accompanied and monitored on land. To this end, the demonstrator (on a scale of 1:10) will be equipped with cameras and radiotelephony and a second monitoring station will be set up in HaFoLa's Living Lab Digital Port with corresponding communication and interaction options. This will allow the overall process sequence to be demonstrated and the new division of activities on board the ship and those on land, more precisely in a monitoring station, to be illustrated and examined with regard to scientific acceptance and stress analyses.
The next milestones in the IHATEC project of the same name are the further development of the CoboTank demonstrator until it is ready for use for the scientific tests, the implementation of the test series and the presentation of the demonstrator to a selected specialist audience for the purpose of validation and identification of further optimisation potential.
