3D Port Container Scanner
ML over 3D scans of shipping containers at an Istanbul port, raising throughput while cutting misreads.
- Istanbul, Turkey — commercial port terminal
A scanning rig for containers moving through a working port terminal in Istanbul. ML models read the 3D capture to classify and verify what was inside.
We built it with Intel, around a depth sensor they were bringing to market at the time. Working against new hardware cuts both ways. You get the capability before anyone else has built anything on it, and you also inherit everything nobody has characterised yet: the noise behaviour, the range where the depth data stops being trustworthy, how it holds up outdoors at a port rather than on a bench indoors. A good chunk of the project was just establishing what the sensor could be relied on to report, because nothing downstream could assume it until then.
The results were operational rather than academic. More containers processed per hour, and fewer misreads than the manual process it replaced. Throughput is the number a port terminal cares about, and a model that’s slightly more accurate but slower is a step backwards there.
ISSD Bilişim Elektronik A.Ş. · 2021