AUTOMATIC GANTRY STEERING SYSTEM FOR A CONTAINER HANDLING MACHINE

摘要

The invention concerns an automatic steering system for a container handling machine, such as a mobile gantry crane (10), in order to make the container handling machine to move along straight lines determined by rows of containers of by a rail track or equivalent. The steering system comprises a navigation system installed in the field of containers, which system determines the desired running line by means of two arbitrarily placed points and keeps the container handling machine (10) on the desired line in order to permit a transfer of containers. The steering system is based on a GPS navigation system, which includes a stationary GPS apparatus mounted in a stationary ground station (21) and mobile GPS apparatuses (24) mounted on the container handling machines (10) moving in the nearby area, which GPS apparatus (24) are fitted to receive signals from the satellites of the GPS system so as to determine the locations of the GPS apparatuses. Further, radio apparatuses (23, 25) have been mounted in the stationary ground station (21) and on the mobile container handling machines (10), by means of which radio apparatuses a position-correcting signal is transmitted from the radio transmitter (23) of the stationary ground station to the mobile radio receivers (25) of the container handling machines (10).