GANTRY CRANES LOOK:
Automation has transformed gantry cranes to perform heavy lifting tasks with precision and minimal intervention. The end-point of automation is the fully autonomous crane that needs no human intervention at all. Julian Champkin reports.
utomation is a work in progress. Partial automation already exists and is considered standard; technologies such as anti-sway,
Konecranes automated waste-to- energy plant.
load monitoring, and collision avoidance relieve many of the duties (and skills) of a human operator and ease their workload. Full automation – the lifting and moving of loads with no human intervention at all save supervision and availability if things go wrong – is available in a few applications; full, routine, widespread automation in the form of the truly autonomous crane is undoubtedly on its way. The lower-hanging fruits have been picked already. Consider cranes in waste-to-energy plants: a gantry with a clam-shell grab over a waste-heap does not need millimetre-accuracy, nor very complicated algorithms, to pick up a load. Put crudely (and oversimplifying of course), ‘drop, close, lift’ are more or less the only instructions it needs and these are easily programmed in. If it performs those operations, it will likely end up with a grabful of waste. Two more instructions: ‘Move to the furnace chute, then open’, will complete the cycle, which can be repeated automatically and indefinitely until a human operator stops it – or can cease without human interference when a sensor detects that the waste supply pile is exhausted. A distance-sensor – working by laser or LIDAR, both now standard technology – can easily
do the detection, by measuring the distance from the gantry to whatever surface is beneath it and comparing it with the known distance to the floor; or if you want more cutting-edge sophistication, a camera feeding vision- recognition technology (probably involving AI) can do the same thing. Or, getting back to basics, a human operator can observe when the waste pile is empty – watching it directly or remotely via screens – and pause the crane manually. Once such operators sat in a cab high up on the gantry bridge, where a lonely individual pulled levers surrounded by dust, noise and vibration, or in a glazed box overlooking the scene of operations. Now systems such Konecranes’ Remote Operating System (ROS) move them to a comfortable office and desk with screens showing and controlling it all from a distance – which need not be in the same building or even the same town at all , and soon even that may be redundant.
NO HANDS… A
Working remotely Riikinvoima is an energy and heating plant in Leppävirta, Finland which works on exactly those principles. It handles and burns some 150,000t of waste a year. Two cranes over the reception bunker load the waste into a shredder, which helps it burn uniformly. Then the same cranes feed the shredded waste into the boiler. Either of the cranes can complete the process alone, or work in tandem with the other.
Most of the time the cranes operate in full automatic mode, working on their own in the waste storage bunker. A glass-walled pulpit with chair and crane controls overlooks the area but it is seldom used; Konecranes’ ROS allows the operator to monitor the cranes in a quite separate control room via camera views on screens. It is safer than the pulpit and also allows the operator time to focus on other tasks. A single operator can potentially run both refuse cranes, resulting in significant efficiencies. The ROS application was adapted from Konecranes’ use of it in operating rubber-tyres gantry cranes (RTGs) in port quaysides.
In fact, the pulpit is so little used that Juha Räsänen, managing director of the plant, has said: “If we were to build this plant now, we would consider leaving the separate pulpit and chair out completely.”
22 | September 2026 |
www.hoistmagazine.com
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