Intelligent door control

AI Embedded software Hardware Innovation

In industrial halls, doors are often opened fully, regardless of who is actually using the door (people, vehicles). As a result, more air than necessary escapes from the hall. This causes both unnecessary energy costs and unpleasant working conditions. By intelligently monitoring the door environment, the door opening can be adapted to the situation, depending on which object is approaching the door: this promotes productivity, saves heating energy and increases working comfort.

  • Initial situation

    In industrial environments, open doors cause significant energy losses due to air ingress. There is a clear need for intelligent industrial door openers to minimise air flows every time the door is opened.

  • SCS solution

    In a joint project, SCS developed Hyperion 3D: a stereoscopic system which
    - "understands" the 3D scenery around industrial gates
    - opens gates as high as necessary / closes them as quickly as possible
    - does not open gates with cross traffic
    - calibrates itself during installation

  • Added value

    Automatic and adaptive door opening for every passing vehicle or person prevents unnecessary door openings by blocking out cross-traffic. This saves energy and costs.

Project insights

Hyperion 3D: intelligent door opener
Hyperion 3D: intelligent door opener
Height-adaptive door control ...
Height-adaptive door control …
Minimised heat loss thanks to adaptive door opening
Minimised heat loss thanks to adaptive door opening

Industrial requirements

In industrial halls, doors are often opened fully, regardless of who is actually using the door (people, vehicles). As a result, more air than necessary escapes from the hall. This causes both unnecessary energy costs and unpleasant working conditions.
By intelligently monitoring the door environment, the door opening can be adapted to the situation, depending on which object is approaching the door: this promotes productivity, saves heating energy and increases working comfort.

Solution

Together with Bircher Smart Access (https://smartaccess.bircher.com/de/), we have developed Hyperion 3D: a stereo-based, intelligent image processing system that measures, classifies and tracks objects in the vicinity of industrial doors in three dimensions. By precisely monitoring the size, speed, direction of movement and type of objects, the door can be opened and closed automatically at the right time and to the appropriate height for each passing vehicle or person.
To monitor both sides of a gate, two separate stereo sensors can be combined. When installed, the stereo sensors are self-calibrating within a few minutes, making the installation plug & play.

Key technologies

Stereoscopic image processing ensures accurate, robust, real-time and economical object recognition in 3D.
Hyperion 3D integrates two synchronised CMOS cameras with fisheye optics to capture a large gate area, an embedded Linux computer with Bluetooth Low Energy interface to communicate with the gate height sensor and configure the sensor via a mobile app, and an Ethernet interface to communicate with its auxiliary sensor on the other side of the gate for two-way gate monitoring.
Another key component is the stereo vision algorithm: it dynamically learns the 3D background space, recognises the size, speed, direction and distance of approaching objects in real time and differentiates between cars, forklift trucks, lorries and people using machine learning methods. The stereovision algorithm also fades out environmental influences, e.g. strong light, shadows, rain or snowfall.

Special challenge

A particular challenge in this project is the automated testing of all components (hardware, software, sensors) as well as the required door behaviour in reality. With a special test setup and an extensive set of reference recordings, it was possible to ensure that the system functions reliably.

Summary

In this joint development project, SCS contributed with the system design, the development of the electro-optical hardware, the embedded software, the image processing and the calibration software. The jointly developed Hyperion 3D stereoscopic sensor minimises the number, height and duration of industrial door openings and reduces the number of unwanted door openings due to cross-traffic masking. This enables customers to save considerable amounts of energy and associated costs. Hyperion 3D has been commercially available since 2019.

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