ABSTRACT
In recent years the operations of container terminals have become more and more autonomous with the introduction of various types of autonomous terminal equipment, such as Automated Guided Vehicles. However, the transshipment of containers from ship to shore is still not yet fully automated. As designs for fully automated container barges are currently in development, a next step can be taken into exploration of designing autonomous transshipment machines for these new barges, which will open the way for container terminals to become integrated and efficient multimodal hubs in the future. This paper presents exploratory designs of an autonomous device for the ship to shore container transshipment, specifically to be used for (autonomous) container barges. The machine should be deployable in any port, with little to no need of fixed infrastructures, such as tracks. Exploration of transshipment concepts fit for use in a fully automated environment, as well as evaluation of initial design solutions in their capacity to improve the productivity of these transshipment concepts is showed in this work.
