MOZART - Mo­bil­ity Op­ti­miZa­tion and Analy­sis in Real Time

Ob­jec­tives

• Co­or­di­nated and flex­i­ble traf­fic sig­nal con­trol is ex­pected to in­crease ca­pac­ity on ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture and re­duce ex­pen­di­tures for road ex­pan­sion.
• Im­proved traf­fic light con­trol also re­duces un­nec­es­sary brak­ing and ac­cel­er­a­tion of ve­hi­cles and can thus re­duce en­ergy con­sump­tion and pol­lu­tant emis­sions.
• The traf­fic model as a dig­i­tal twin pro­vides an im­proved overview of the traf­fic sit­u­a­tion and ap­proaches for im­prov­ing traf­fic man­age­ment.
• The im­ple­men­ta­tion should pro­vide in­sights for fur­ther traf­fic net­works that could be op­ti­mized by the in­no­v­a­tive ap­proach.

De­scrip­tion

• Fixed-time and traf­fic-de­pen­dent con­trolled traf­fic sig­nals are to be sup­ple­mented by a net­work-wide, con­tin­u­ous real-time traf­fic light pro­gram con­trol.  
• Real-time traf­fic con­trol is achieved by record­ing all traf­fic in the net­work under study, and map­ping it in a traf­fic model.
• Based on this, de­ci­sions are made about co­or­di­nated traf­fic light con­trols .
• Since the com­pu­ta­tional ef­fort is al­ready very high in small net­works and an op­ti­miza­tion would take hours or days, in­no­v­a­tive proces­sors are used that ex­ploit in­sights from the field of quan­tum com­put­ing. In this way, op­ti­miza­tion de­ci­sions for traf­fic lights can be made in a few sec­onds.
• After prepara­tory fea­si­bil­ity pro­ject phases, the MOZART pro­ject ("Quan­tum An­neal­ing for Traf­fic Flow Op­ti­miza­tion") is now being con­tin­ued as part of the SAN­TANA pro­ject port­fo­lio traf­fic flow op­ti­miza­tion") is being con­tin­ued. 
• The aim is to com­mis­sion the in­no­v­a­tive net­work con­trol at 5 traf­fic light in­ter­sec­tions in the Neuhof area and on the main port route.

In par­tic­u­lar

• Traf­fic is recorded in the port by sen­sors and the road net­work is mod­eled in de­tail in a traf­fic model.
• The cur­rently mea­sured traf­fic vol­ume is used to fore­cast the vol­ume at the traf­fic light in­ter­sec­tions. 
• Op­ti­miza­tion po­ten­tials of the con­trol sys­tem are cal­cu­lated and com­pared with their ef­fects for neigh­bor­ing traf­fic lights.
• Re­sults, such as ex­ten­sions of green times, changed se­quence of traf­fic light phases are sent to the traf­fic lights as a re­sult.
• Traf­fic is mea­sured con­tin­u­ously, cre­at­ing a net­work-wide con­trol loop for record­ing and con­trol­ling traf­fic.

Tech­nol­ogy & trends

• Quan­tum an­neal­ers and dig­i­tal an­neal­ers are novel proces­sors for op­ti­miza­tion meth­ods. Con­ven­tional proces­sors take too long to cal­cu­late a con­crete re­sult for an ideal value. 
• With the in­no­v­a­tive cal­cu­la­tion meth­ods, ap­prox­i­ma­tion meth­ods are suf­fi­cient to achieve an op­ti­mal re­sult in prac­tice. The field of traf­fic con­trol is highly suit­able for these new tech­nolo­gies.

Op­por­tu­ni­ties

• Op­ti­mal traf­fi­clight switch­ing: tap­ping into ca­pac­i­ties of the con­struc­tive as well as tech­ni­cal in­fra­struc­ture of the heav­ily loaded port net­work
• Plus a re­duc­tion of harm­ful emis­sions through an op­ti­mised way of dri­ving (break­ing and ac­cel­er­at­ing be­hav­iour)
• On top of this, an im­proved un­der­stand­ing of the in­ter­ac­tions be­tween the traf­fic sit­u­a­tion and net­work con­trol is cre­ated; net­work sit­u­a­tion pic­ture, bot­tle­neck analy­sis, in­te­gra­tion of third-party data, Car2X in­de­pen­dent of traf­fic lights, open for Hu­man2x, Bike2x, pri­or­ity for po­lice, fire brigade, pub­lic trans­port, etc.
• A flex­i­bly con­trolled net­work is ex­pected to pro­vide sav­ings in main­te­nance, per­son­nel and in­vest­ment
• Sen­sors used ge­o­graph­i­cally flex­i­bly, fu­ture-proof for up­com­ing de­tec­tion processes

Media

Image films of the con­cept of FU­JITSU

• In its sov­er­eign areas of re­spon­si­bil­ity, the HPA is plan­ning to use drones, es­pe­cially in the areas of "pre­ven­tion and man­age­ment of spe­cial events" and "water sur­face con­trol", in order to make ex­ist­ing processes safer or op­ti­mize them and to in­tro­duce new ser­vices. In the con­text of the dis­as­ter con­trol HASTA, for ex­am­ple, it is in­ves­ti­gated how to sup­port large-scale sit­u­a­tions, e.g. storm surges, ac­ci­dents or other ad-hoc in­ci­dents with high-res­o­lu­tion real-time sit­u­a­tion im­ages. Es­pe­cially in these very time-crit­i­cal areas, drones rep­re­sent a sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in ef­fi­ciency.
   
• In ad­di­tion, var­i­ous smart port in­fra­struc­ture man­age­ment ser­vices specif­i­cally adapted to the Port of Ham­burg's in­fra­struc­ture and in­di­vid­ual use case en­vi­ron­ments are being tested and de­vel­oped. In the medium term, the HPA will make parts of in­fra­struc­ture man­age­ment more in­tel­li­gent and sus­tain­able in this way. In this way, the HPA is fol­low­ing a dig­i­tal strat­egy on the topic of in­tel­li­gent port in­fra­struc­ture man­age­ment. Here, too, the HPA is pri­mar­ily in­ter­ested in "in­creas­ing safety", for ex­am­ple by means of main­te­nance rou­tines in the in­spec­tion of struc­tures and the as­so­ci­ated pos­si­bil­ity of early dam­age de­tec­tion or dam­age de­vel­op­ment fore­casts (pre­dic­tive main­te­nance), as well as in "more sus­tain­able and ef­fi­cient in­fra­struc­ture man­age­ment".  

Op­por­tu­ni­ties

• Se­cu­rity en­hance­ment through drone-based real-time sit­u­a­tional aware­ness ser­vice for ad-hoc sit­u­a­tions and large-scale sit­u­a­tions through­out the port area. 
• Cre­ation of au­to­mated sen­sor data sets to sup­port water area and path­way con­trols, as well as in­tel­li­gent in­fra­struc­ture man­age­ment (main­te­nance rou­tines, struc­tural in­spec­tions, "pre­dic­tive main­te­nance"...) 

Tech­nol­ogy & Trends

• Drones - aer­ial drones (UAV), float­ing drones (ASV), div­ing drones (UUV), rovers
• Tele­op­er­a­tion Con­trol Cen­ter 
• Au­to­mated traf­fic con­trol 
• Data set pro­duc­tions for dig­i­tal twins

Echo 1

Ob­jec­tive

• Echo.1 is the first un­manned sur­face ve­hi­cle of­fi­cially ap­proved by the Ober­hafe­namt for the ac­qui­si­tion of basic hy­dro­graphic data in the Ham­burg port area. In ad­di­tion to its op­er­a­tional use in HPA water depth main­te­nance as an ad­di­tional tool in wa­ter­course mea­sure­ment, this plat­form serves as a pi­o­neer for au­tonomous water ve­hi­cles in port op­er­a­tions. In ad­di­tion to water body mea­sure­ment, the mod­u­lar mea­sure­ment plat­form will be up­graded and used for other ap­pli­ca­tions in the Port of Ham­burg in the fu­ture. 

De­scrip­tion

• De­spite its small size of 1.65m in length and a total weight of ap­prox. 50kg, the bat­tery-pow­ered de­vice is equipped with high-per­for­mance nav­i­ga­tion and mea­sure­ment tech­nol­ogy. In ad­di­tion to a pow­er­ful multi­beam echo sounder, Echo.1 has an in­ter­fer­ence-in­sen­si­tive satel­lite po­si­tion­ing sys­tem, an AIS transpon­der, a col­li­sion avoid­ance radar, and much more, while being highly ma­neu­ver­able and nim­ble at up to 10kn. - This ves­sel will ini­tially sup­port the hy­drog­ra­phy of the HPA in har­bor areas that are dif­fi­cult (only at cer­tain tide times) or im­pos­si­ble to reach for the clas­sic sound­ing ves­sels. It is also pos­si­ble to use the ASV as a (force mul­ti­plier) au­to­mated "dinghy" to the ships in order to hy­dro­graph­i­cally sur­vey cer­tain har­bor areas even more ef­fi­ciently. The data is sent au­to­mat­i­cally to the of­fice via the In­ter­net, hope­fully soon also via 5G, as on the clas­sic sound­ing ships, where it is checked for plau­si­bil­ity and then made avail­able to all users via the peildesk ap­pli­ca­tion also de­vel­oped at WI.

Op­por­tu­ni­ties

• Since the safety of ship­ping traf­fic in the port is para­mount, the basic rules and re­quire­ments for the op­er­a­tion of such sys­tems were de­vel­oped to­gether with the Ober­hafe­namt. These are now being tested and will be con­tin­u­ously de­vel­oped in line with the state of the art in the fu­ture. It is im­por­tant to men­tion that even in au­tonomous mea­sure­ment mode, the un­manned ve­hi­cle is al­ways mon­i­tored by a per­son (the so-called "wo/men in the loop") within vi­sual range, can be reached by radio by port ship­ping, and thus safety is al­ways guar­an­teed. - Fu­ture fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of sen­sor tech­nol­ogy to op­ti­mize so-called "sit­u­a­tional aware­ness" in com­bi­na­tion with the adap­ta­tion of col­li­sion pre­ven­tion al­go­rithms will en­able such sys­tems to achieve a higher de­gree of au­ton­omy in the fu­ture and thus in­crease ef­fi­ciency dur­ing de­ploy­ment. 

Risks

• A risk analy­sis was pre­pared for the op­er­a­tional use of Echo.1 in the Ham­burg port area, which is con­tin­u­ously adapted to the state of the art and processes. Cer­tain risks have been ad­di­tion­ally min­i­mized by the nau­ti­cal frame­work con­di­tions listed in the ship­ping po­lice per­mit, so that safe de­ploy­ment of this ve­hi­cle is en­sured at all times. - In the ini­tial phase when in­tro­duc­ing such tech­nolo­gies, it must be ex­pected that more human re­sources will be re­quired and thus an in­crease in ef­fi­ciency will not be im­me­di­ately ap­par­ent. Like­wise, care must be taken to en­sure that the port in­dus­try can ad­just to un­manned wa­ter­craft and gain good ex­pe­ri­ence in deal­ing with this tech­nol­ogy, which will even­tu­ally lead to ac­cep­tance. - Clas­sic ship crews in par­tic­u­lar are un­der­stand­ably skep­ti­cal about the topic of "un­manned wa­ter­craft." Here, it is es­sen­tial to in­volve and in­form col­leagues from the out­set, as the job de­scrip­tion of ship­mas­ters will cer­tainly change sig­nif­i­cantly in the medium term.

Strat­egy goal

• Strat­egy goal
• Eval­u­ate tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tions Medium
• In­crease process ef­fi­ciency High
• Pro­mote col­lab­o­ra­tion, break down silos Medium
• New busi­ness mod­els / fields (new cus­tomer struc­tures or rev­enue streams) Low

Tech­nol­ogy & Trends

• De­spite its small size, this new ve­hi­cle is also suit­able for other ap­pli­ca­tions in the Port of Ham­burg and can be equipped with ad­di­tional or re­place­ment sen­sors on a mod­u­lar basis. In ad­di­tion to a cur­rent mea­sure­ment de­vice (ADCP), a laser scan­ner can also be in­stalled for record­ing the shore struc­tures. Also dif­fer­ent sin­gle beam or sed­i­ment echosounders for fu­ture nau­ti­cal depth ap­pli­ca­tions are pos­si­ble. Fur­ther­more, this ve­hi­cle or, if nec­es­sary, ad­di­tional ve­hi­cles of iden­ti­cal de­sign can be used for col­lect­ing sur­face water sam­ples and mea­sur­ing emis­sions.
   
• In ad­di­tion to the use of this new ve­hi­cle in the op­er­a­tional water depth main­te­nance as an ad­di­tional tool in the water mea­sure­ment, the Hy­drog­ra­phy cur­rently also sees many points of con­nec­tion with dig­i­ti­za­tion pro­jects al­ready un­der­way or in plan­ning within the HPA. One of these is the co­op­er­a­tion and ex­change of ex­pe­ri­ence in the Robo­VaaS pro­ject (CDO), in which the new ve­hi­cle can be used in cer­tain test sce­nar­ios. In ad­di­tion, a pre­lim­i­nary pro­ject is just start­ing for the pro­ject "5x5G Ini­tia­tive Ham­burg Leit­stand" (HPA, LSBG, etc.), in which the ve­hi­cle is planned to be equipped with 5G tech­nol­ogy and thus send real-time data with net­work slic­ing (high band­width, low la­tency, high re­li­a­bil­ity) to a con­trol cen­ter.
   
• Through HPA pro­jects such as Wiz­ARd, the in­ter­ac­tion / com­bi­na­tion be­tween dif­fer­ent in­no­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies such as aug­mented and vir­tual re­al­ity ap­pli­ca­tions in the con­trol and mon­i­tor­ing of Echo.1 is being de­vel­oped and tested. In ad­di­tion, there are hy­drog­ra­phy-in­ter­nal eval­u­a­tion tests in which AI al­go­rithms for au­to­mated data plau­si­bil­ity checks are tested in the eval­u­a­tion of hy­dro­graphic sound­ing data.

Robo­VaaS - Ro­botic Ves­sels as a Ser­vice

Ob­jec­tives

• The pro­vi­sion of ser­vices based on au­tonomous sur­face ve­hi­cles (ASVs) and re­motely op­er­ated ve­hi­cles (ROVs)
• Focus on the fol­low­ing ser­vices: anti-ground­ing, un­der­wa­ter in­spec­tion of ships, and cap­tur­ing of en­vi­ron­men­tal data

De­scrip­tion

• Con­struc­tion of an ASV as a test plat­form
• In­te­gra­tion of a trans­port plat­form for ROVs into ASVs
• Cre­ation of the in­fra­struc­ture for con­trol­ling ASVs and ROVs, as well as the dis­play of data in a charg­ing sta­tion or on a ship for an im­proved as­sess­ment of the sit­u­a­tion
  Re­sult: test­ing and pro­vi­sion of the three ser­vices and the nec­es­sary soft­ware in­fra­struc­ture (anti-ground­ing, un­der­wa­ter in­spec­tion, en­vi­ron­men­tal data cap­ture)
• Im­pacts: fast cre­ation of a pic­ture of the sit­u­a­tion cov­er­ing ques­tions such as ba­thym­e­try (mea­sure­ments), ship in­spec­tion, and fast and ef­fi­cient ac­tions based on real-time in­for­ma­tion

Re­sult: Test­ing and de­ploy­ment of the three ser­vices and the nec­es­sary soft­ware in­fra­struc­ture (Anti-Ground­ing, Un­der­wa­ter In­spec­tion, En­vi­ron­men­tal Data Gath­er­ing).

• Im­pact: faster cre­ation of a sit­u­a­tion pic­ture in is­sues such as ba­thym­e­try (sur­vey­ing), ship in­spec­tion, faster and more ef­fi­cient ac­tion due to real-time in­for­ma­tion

home­PORT – HPA’s real-world lab­o­ra­tory as trade fair grounds in the heart of the port

Just in time for the start of the ITS World Con­gress (11–15 Oc­to­ber 2021), the home­PORT con­tainer cam­pus is open­ing its doors.

home­PORT is an in­no­va­tion cam­pus and real-world urban, mar­itime lab­o­ra­tory lo­cated in the heart of the Port of Ham­burg. It aims to give in­no­v­a­tive and am­bi­tious port play­ers, aca­d­e­mics and sci­ence, tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies and start-ups the space they need to try out new things, to ex­per­i­ment and col­lab­o­rate with other part­ners and play­ers.

In ad­di­tion to the con­tainer cam­pus, which serves as a meet­ing point for the com­mu­nity, the real-world lab­o­ra­tory in­cludes ac­cess to the port in­fra­struc­tures. As an urban tech play­ground, home­PORT of­fers a range of the re­spec­tive test sur­faces cov­er­ing water, air and land.

Dur­ing the ITS World Con­gress, home­PORT be­comes dronePORT. On the ex­clu­sive demon­stra­tion stage, var­i­ous drone demon­stra­tions will be tak­ing place every day through­out the en­tire week. Whether fly­ing, sur­face or un­der­wa­ter drones, you can see every­thing close-up and in­ter­act with the pro­jects. In ad­di­tion to drones, there are also ex­cit­ing ex­hibitors and demon­stra­tions on 3D print­ing and sen­sors.

If you don’t have a ticket yet for the ITS World Con­gress, a great al­ter­na­tive is the ITS Pub­lic Day on 14 Oc­to­ber. On this day, the en­tire trade fair grounds, in­clud­ing home­PORT, is open to the pub­lic. You can sign up at: pro­gramme for ITS Pub­lic Day – ham­burg.de.

For more in­for­ma­tion about the lo­ca­tion, the pro­gramme and the in­di­vid­ual pro­jects, please see our web­site: ITS 2021 @ home­PORT – home­PORT.