MITSUI E&S together with Liberaware conducted a demonstration experiment by utilizing the small industrial drone “IBIS”, which was specially designed for indoor spaces, to inspect the internal structure of the quayside container crane.

As an effort to improve the safety and inspection quality of container crane internal structure inspection, instead of continuing the conventional inspection method that requires inspection worker to enter the structure, Liberaware’s small drone IBIS was used in this demonstration experiment to take a video of the internal structure of the crane and the recorded video was then evaluated in an office. Compared to the conventional inspection method, it was confirmed that inspection using this new technology could improve the safety of inspection workers, improve the inspection quality through video recording, and shorten the period of after-inspection-investigation needed before the repair work.

As for the detailed periodic evaluation of container cranes and in response to customer requests, MITSUI E&S is considering providing a service for the inspections of the internal structures of the container cranes by using IBIS in the future. MITSUI E&S is also considering linking the inspection results with the Next Generation Crane Monitoring System (CARMS) developed by MITSUI E&S to enhance the efficiency of crane maintenance and management.