To The Moon

Stepping into Shandong Port's Qingdao Port, a scene brimming with technological sophistication unfolds: high-voltage shore power self-propelled robots glide steadily along pre-set routes, precisely docking with the power supply interfaces of berthed vessels; inside the belt conveyor gallery of the grain terminal, intelligent inspection robots meticulously examine the operational status of equipment section by section... The presence of smart robots is quietly reshaping the operational landscape of Qingdao Port. In recent years, focusing on the pain points of port operations, Qingdao Port has developed and deployed nearly 20 types of intelligent robots, charting a path of high-quality development through intelligent transformation and upgrading. In 2025, the port became home to the nation's first batch and the port industry's sole national AI application pilot base in the transportation sector, further cementing this century-old port's role as a "testing ground" for technological innovation in Chinese ports and carving out a "new smart coordinate" on the global shipping map. Shore power robots are tackling the bottlenecks in green transformation. The use of shore power during vessel berthing is a crucial measure for ports to practice green development, reducing both fuel consumption and exhaust emissions. However, for a long time, factors like insufficient cable length, limited mobility, and complex operations have constrained the efficiency of shore power connections and the scheduling of berths. "The terminal's working conditions are complex, and with no readily available, suitable equipment, we were determined to develop our own high-voltage shore power self-propelled robot," said Zhang Feng, Deputy General Manager of Qingdao Port Automation Terminal Company. The path of development was far from simple. The primary challenge the team faced initially was the design of the high-voltage shore power cable reel equipment—it needed to be structurally robust, well-protected, and space-efficient to adapt to the complex environment of the quayside, while also avoiding interference with large loading and unloading machinery, imposing extremely stringent requirements on compactness, load capacity, and cable payout/retrieval length. To accurately find the technical balance, the R&D team moved their office directly to the worksite. By day, they were rooted at the terminal, repeatedly measuring data and simulating actual conditions; by night, they worked overtime revising design plans, with every blueprint brought to the site for comparative verification. "Sometimes even a minor adjustment required recalculating all parameters; during that period, the team had almost no rest," Zhang Feng recalled. Perseverance paid off. Through continuous effort, the team successfully developed a new cable reel device with twice the cable capacity of similar products yet a 30% reduction in structural volume, achieving a technical breakthrough of "small size, big power." Just as the project neared final assembly, a new issue emerged—a key component of the locomotion mechanism required urgent optimization. To save time, technicians drove over a thousand kilometers overnight to an external processing plant to adjust the plan on-site. Recalling that hectic night, Pan Haiqing, Deputy Manager of the Engineering Technology Department at the Automation Terminal Company, expressed deep emotion: "We had only one thought: finish a day earlier, and the terminal benefits a day sooner." After three months, Qingdao Port's first high-voltage shore power self-propelled robot was finally born. It can nimbly navigate the narrow spaces between quay cranes and vessels, and even if a ship's berthing position is off, it can quickly and accurately complete the cable connection. In 2025, these robots cumulatively performed connection operations for over 200 vessels, with a utilization rate exceeding 60%, helping the Qingdao Port automation terminal achieve an annual shore power consumption surpassing 6 million kWh, a year-on-year increase of over 85%. Notably, this innovation has been promoted and applied in multiple ports across China, effectively solving the challenge of vessel shore power connection and providing a replicable solution for the green transformation of ports nationwide. Tally clerk robots are freeing workers from exposure to the elements. In the past, the bustling scene at Qingdao Port's general cargo terminal always included busy tally clerks. "Tally work used to be pure manual labor, relying entirely on running around, visual checks, and handwritten records. We were in and out of the storage yard all day; in summer, clothes would be soaked with sweat, drying only to get wet again, and in winter, the biting wind felt like knives on the face, with hands constantly freezing stiff. But the worst was rainy days—documents would get soaked, ink smudging into illegible blots, which was a frequent occurrence," said Gao Fangyu, who spent most of his career as a tally clerk at Qingdao Port, his tone full of emotion when recalling the past. Traditional port tallying, reliant on manual visual inspection and paper records, suffered from low efficiency and inherent safety risks. As port throughput grew and cargo types diversified, the traditional model could no longer meet the demands of high-quality operations. Therefore, Qingdao Port decisively set its innovation course: develop an intelligent tally robot capable of autonomous movement and panoramic perception, freeing tally clerks from the elements and enabling fully visible, controllable, and traceable operations. The first hurdle in development was adapting the robot to the complex terminal environment. With general cargo terminals featuring unevenly stacked goods and irregular ground surfaces, traditional fixed tally equipment had limited视野, and ordinary mobile devices struggled to move smoothly. The R&D team from Qingdao Port Waili Company boldly adopted a "crawler-track solution," but encountered a setback during the first field test—the robot slipped and nearly stalled at a steel plate seam. Led by Zang Wensheng, Manager of the Information Technology Department, the team immersed themselves on-site, repeatedly observing road conditions, adjusting structures, and optimizing materials. After dozens of attempts, they finally developed a high-traction crawler system successfully adapted to various surfaces like concrete and steel plates, achieving "unhindered movement in all scenarios." The team also equipped the robot with multiple independently adjustable omnidirectional cameras and developed intelligent visual scheduling algorithms that automatically lock onto cargo markings in different locations. By training and optimizing with tens of thousands of cargo marking data points, the robot can accurately identify key information such as shipping marks, container numbers, and damage conditions, even in poor lighting or with worn markings. "Furthermore, ensuring stable data transmission is crucial," Zang Wensheng explained. Dense large metal cargoes at the terminal can easily block signals, so the team built a triple-guarantee system incorporating wired, wireless, and ad-hoc networks, ensuring immediate backup link activation if常规wireless signals fail, guaranteeing real-time, secure tally data transmission and uninterrupted operation continuity. "Before, a single shift could mean over 20,000 steps on WeChat. Now, monitoring multiple work points is effortless. The physical labor intensity has drastically decreased, while work accuracy and efficiency have significantly improved," Gao Fangyu told the reporter. Since the deployment of the intelligent tally robots, the time required per tally transaction has been reduced by 30%, field exposure risk for personnel has been lowered by over 90%, and information accuracy approaches 100%. Inspection robots are safeguarding the smooth flow of grain supplies. At the grain terminal in Qingdao Port's Dongjiakou Port Area, multiple belt conveyors operate day and night, continuously transporting grain cargoes like soybeans and wheat, working tirelessly to ensure stable and smooth supply chains. As a critical link in grain import and transshipment, the stable operation of these conveyors is paramount, reliant on round-the-clock, comprehensive, and precise inspection. However, traditional manual inspection methods have shortcomings: dim lighting at night can lead to missed hidden faults; inspection quality depends heavily on individual experience, leading to inconsistent judgment standards and difficulty establishing a stable early warning mechanism... Ensuring the safe and efficient 24/7 operation of the belt conveyors became an urgent challenge for the terminal maintenance team. "To truly solve problems, we must be grounded at the frontline," asserted Chen Houbin, Assistant Captain of the Grain Team at Qingdao Port Dongjiakou Branch Company. Without delay, he led technical骨干on a 45-day field investigation. They meticulously measured inspection points along every conveyor belt, traversing each route at least three times, walking nearly a hundred kilometers in total, and recording details like equipment layout and operational parameters in their notebooks. Based on this firsthand data, the team accurately identified the core issues of traditional inspections and resolved to create an intelligent inspection robot integrating sound and temperature recognition, precise positioning, and autonomous movement. Wang Qing, a new employee with just one year of experience, proactively took on the task of technical translation, converting the manual inspection experience of "listening for sounds and feeling for temperature" into quantifiable technical solutions. He equipped the robot with highly sensitive audio sensors as its "ears" to accurately capture faint abnormal noises from components like bearings and motors, and infrared temperature measurement modules as its "eyes" to monitor real-time temperature changes at key points. This dual-dimensional fusion detection achieved a fault recognition accuracy exceeding 98%. However, complex environmental conditions, particularly low light at night, posed a new challenge for the robot's mobility. As dusk fell, Chen Houbin and his team would stay on-site debugging parameters and optimizing programs. After hundreds of trials, they successfully combined laser radar positioning with an inertial navigation system, enabling precise robot movement in complex environments. Today, the intelligent inspection robot has become a vital maintenance force at the grain terminal. It conducts automated inspections daily along preset routes, with a frequency more than three times that of manual inspections. Human resource input has been reduced by 40%, conveyor belt故障downtime incidents have decreased by 25%, ensuring continuous and stable grain transportation and achieving dual optimization of labor and maintenance costs. As a vivid microcosm of the transformation of a century-old seaport—from manual climbing operations to robotic precision, from traditional tallying to intelligent recognition, from experience-based inspections to data-driven warnings—Qingdao Port's intelligent exploration is injecting powerful momentum into building China into a transport powerhouse, radiating new vitality and dynamism on the global shipping stage.