Automated, high-speed container transport between quay and stackyard – as the only global supplier of Automated Guided Vehicles (AGV) for use in container terminals, including the management and navigation software to control the AGV fleet, Gottwald Port Technology is not only the leading manufacturer in the Harbour Crane business, but also a foremost supplier of automated solutions in the port logistics sector. Terminal planning, AGVs, software, services: Gottwald supplies all of this and more, from a single source.
The Port of Hamburg. Container Terminal Altenwerder (CTA), the most state-of-the-art container transhipment site in the world and number nine in the global ranking of container ports, has seen a degree of technical automation without equal, and to which Gottwald has made an important contribution with its AGVs. As if by magic, a fleet of over 70 Gottwald AGVs transports containers between quay and stackyard.

AGV – High-Tech from Gottwald, Fully Automatic, Precise and Expedient
Automated Guided Vehicles can hold 20’, 40’ and even 45’ containers. Thanks to computer control, they fulfil their travel orders on-schedule, working almost silently at high speed with position accuracy of within +/- 3 degrees. They travel forwards, in reverse, sideways and can even overtake each other. Even refuelling takes place automatically. They are controlled and supplied with data and orders by the Gottwald management and navigation software, and so-called transponders, i.e. electro-magnetic route markers embedded into the ground of the terminal.

Gottwald Management and Navigation Systems
For operating entire AGV fleets, Gottwald provides management and navigation systems designed by Gottwald’s own software engineers. The complex control centre controls and monitors the AGVs, and can be integrated into higher-ranking terminal management systems.

Many of the more than 400 vehicles already supplied have been working reliably in daily operation for more than 17 years. The AGV fleet, too, has been at the Europe Container Terminals (ECT) in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, since the beginning. Gottwald jointly developed this automation concept with this customer at the end of the 1980s.

AGV – Hand-in-Hand with ASC
In large container terminals involving container transport, storage and transloading, Gottwald AGVs work hand-in-hand with Automated Stacking Cranes (ASC) – linked by management software from Gottwald.

AGVs – Now Available with Two Drive Options:
Diesel-Hydraulic and Diesel-Electric
With two drive options – diesel-hydraulic and the new diesel-electric – Gottwald is offering its customers an opportunity to define requirements for their container terminal based on prevailing conditions, and then to opt for one of the two drive systems.

Since summer 2005, Gottwald has offered diesel-electric version of the AGV
(E-AGV) in addition to the diesel-hydraulic drive that has proven so successful over many years. The diesel-electric drive has all the technical features that already characterise the diesel-hydraulic AGV. In the new diesel-electric E-AGV, Gottwald, the leading supplier of diesel-electric Mobile Harbour Cranes , makes use of a drive technology that has been proven to be a winner at ports again and again. The benefits for the customer: a greater degree of efficiency, greater availability and cost-effectiveness, improved environmental friendliness. Two leading terminal operators have ordered a total of nearly 130 of these machines.