China Water Transport Network: Zhejiang Ningbo Customs' 'Robot Dog' Empowers Port Inspection Upgrade

The robotic dog can flexibly shuttle between containers and accurately complete inspection tasks 24/7, with an efficiency more than twice that of manual labor, "said Zhang Jian, Deputy Director of the Logistics Monitoring Department of Meishan Customs in Meishan Port Area, Zhoushan Port, Ningbo, Zhejiang recently.
As a benchmark port for intelligent development in Ningbo Zhoushan Port, Meishan Port Area's container throughput will exceed 13 million TEUs by 2025, including 3.858 million TEUs of imported empty containers for foreign trade. With the surge in business, traditional manual inspection faces the limitations of limited human resources and daily inspection of only 200 boxes, and extreme weather conditions affect the quality of operations. Improving regulatory efficiency has become a common demand of customs and enterprises.
To solve the problem, Ningbo Customs has recently introduced customized AI quadruped robots, equipped with dual light pan tilt zoom, industrial grade cameras, and high-precision navigation modules, with six core functions including automatic inspection, box number recognition, and interlayer detection. It can adapt to uneven ground and high-risk environments, and accurately identify foreign objects and vector organisms with laser measurement and image computing technology. "Zhang Xiaorong, the relevant person in charge of the robot company, added that this industrial grade robot is specially designed for customs scenes, with outstanding mobility and compatibility.
Since the fully quantified trial operation on January 6th, the robot has achieved remarkable results: as of January 29th, it has assisted in the inspection of 1655 natural boxes, with a box number recognition accuracy rate of 92%, a foreign object detection rate of 95%, and a maximum of 100 natural boxes inspected in a single day. This not only ensures the safety of customs officers, but also meets the demand for rapid turnover of empty containers, which is an important achievement of smart customs construction, "said Wu Renmin, Deputy Director of Meishan Customs.