OCR Technology from ASE at MegaHub Lehrte

A new high-speed transshipment facility, the MegaHub Lehrte, was built on the site of the former Lehrte marshalling yard. The groundbreaking ceremony took place in May 2018. With high-performance portal cranes, a new type of sorting system and an automatic consignment registration system for trains and trucks, goods will be handled much more faster and efficiently here in the future.

In November 2019, the tender for the work "Automatic shipment registration of loading units and means of transport in combined rail/road traffic"" was issued. This covered the supply, installation and commissioning of

• various barrier systems incl. traffic lights and intercoms to control the traffic flow on the site
• a camera system for crane observation and monitoring of the barrier systems
• two Truck Gates for the detection of trucks as well as their loading units in the entry and exit area incl. plant protection (concrete guide walls)
• two Rail Gates for the detection of trains as well as loading units in the eastern and western entry area in walkable portal construction

The OCR technology of the video gates enables the recognition of the respective vehicle data (UIC wagon number and vehicle/trailer license plate) as well as the characteristic signs and codes of the loading units such as container numbers (BIC/ILU), dangerous goods numbers (ADR/UN) or RFID tags. *

At the cockpit workstation in the terminal building, all data merges via XML interfaces in the operations control system, thus ensuring optimized and faster handling processes.

We would like to thank DB Netz AG for their confidence and are pleased to support the automation processes at the MegaHub Lehrte with our NUMBERCheck video gates.

You can also find more information in the DB video "MegaHub Lehrte: Germany's most modern freight hub" at: https://youtu.be/bzAg4ZMfcwc

*Abbreviations:

OCR:  Optical Character Recognition.

UIC:  12-digit identification number of freight and passenger train cars. Regulation by the International Union of Railways (Union internationale des chemins de fer).

BIC/ILU code: Owner identification of all loading units. The BIC code is used worldwide for freight containers, the ILU code for European loading units.

ADR: European Agreement concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods. It contains regulations for road transport with regard to packaging, load securing and labeling.

UN: Identification number for all hazardous substances

RFID: Radio Frequency Identification (identification technology consisting of transmitter and receiver (tags/transponders).

XML: eXtensible Markup Language (data format for describing, storing and exchanging
 data).