Cargo Container Loading, Inspection and Management with AR

Containers play an important role in the transportation of goods by sea and air. There are a variety of ways that AR can assist employees to track and manage containers on a vessel, airplane or in port. Where there are risks there are also opportunities. By having information about the status of containers, as well as the weight, shape and type of contents of containers in an AR-ready database, technicians can make better informed decisions.

An example of this is cold chain management. Containers with climate control are used to preserve and to extend and ensure the shelf life of products, such as fresh agricultural produce, frozen food, chemicals, and pharmaceutical products. Depending on the specific product, other physical parameters of the chain may also be regulated, (e.g. CO2/oxygen level, humidity and others).

Cold chain governance requires continuous monitoring and/or RFID tags to document the temperature history down to the container level. If a cold chain breaks, it is paramount to identify effected cargo as such and remove it from further shipping as soon as possible. Head mounted displays, or handheld devices can track unloading cargo and – pulling the data from the container’s data logger – visually identify non-compliant containers. This visualization allows for an efficient way of isolating non-compliance or other mismatches.

Stowage is another example. When loading merchant vessels, air cargo, or another shipping instrument, weight distribution is carefully calculated and loading is planned accordingly. These stowage plans are critical to vessel stability therefore compliance is very important. Although stowage or loading plans are delivered by various software tools, execution is dependent on human interaction.

Head mounted displays, handheld devices or stationary cameras can track loading cargo using computer vision, container marking (e.g. QR codes), RFID or other dedicated sensor networks. When loading is finished, cargo distribution can be projected on a digital representation of a vessel. This visualization allows for an efficient way to identify potential non-compliance or other mismatches leading to lower efficiency or risks.

This research topic focuses on documenting use cases for enriching the interactions that AR-enabled technicians, on board, during loading and in port, can have and decisions they may make when receiving and using accurate and up-to-date information about containers and their contents. As the professionals move about within and around containers when loading, inspecting, maintaining or repairing commercial containers, they will be more productive, and security and safety policy compliance can increase.

Stakeholders

Operators of any cargo service including but not limited to shipping services, pilots, naval captains, shipping operations managers, quality managers, security managers, workers performing repair and maintenance on shipping containers, port operations, customs agents.

Possible Methodologies

This research requires a team of experts intimately familiar with all aspects of the transportation of goods. The study of regional as well as global shipping patterns and technologies will be followed by development of prototypes and testing in a variety of settings. In field usability trials, with service professionals can reveal new requirements and opportunities for AR-assisted and IoT connected containers to reduce risk and increase productivity.

Research Program

or sea. Research can be combined with assessments of accuracy at a distance from the target. The study of AR in commercial ports could have impacts on customs clearance and compliance with regulatory policy (e.g., safety, duties, etc).

Miscellaneous Notes

Western Container Sales, a container retailer, offers AR experiences for prospective customers.

Keywords

Marine, logistics, shipping, freight, cold chain, commercial shipping, containers, tracking, ships, cargo airplanes, technicians, port operations, cargo loading, inspection, safety,

Research Agenda Categories

Industries, Business, Technology

Expected Impact Timeframe

Medium

Related Publications

Using the words in this topic description and Natural Language Processing analysis of publications in the AREA FindAR database, the references below have the highest number of matches with this topic:

• Lutz, R. R. (2018). Safe-AR: Reducing Risk While Augmenting Reality. 2018 IEEE 29th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE).
• Mukhametshin, S., Makhmutova, A., & Anikin, I. (2019). Sensor Tag Detection, Tracking and Recognition for AR Application. 2019 International Conference on Industrial Engineering, Applications and Manufacturing (ICIEAM).
• Babu, N. S. C. (2017). Keynote 1: Internet of Things(IoT) and augmented reality for e-learning. 2017 5th National Conference on E-Learning & E-Learning Technologies (ELELTECH).
• Schmalstieg, D. (2018). VIS Keynote Address : When Visualization Met Augmented Reality. 2018 IEEE Conference on Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST).
• Butkiewicz, T., & Stevens, A. H. (2020). Evaluation of the effects of field-of-view in augmented reality for marine navigation. Optical Architectures for Displays and Sensing in Augmented, Virtual, and Mixed Reality (AR, VR, MR).

More publications can be explored using the AREA FindAR research tool.

Author

Christine Perey, Peter Orban

Last Published (yyyy-mm-dd)

2021-08-31

Go to Enterprise AR Research Topic Interactive Dashboard