AISTech 2019 — Proceedings of the Iron & Steel Technology Conference

6–9 May 2019, Pittsburgh, Pa., USA

DOI 10.1000.377.096

Advanced Equipment Tracking in High-Temperature Production Environments at voestalpine

and Dillinger

Andreas Rohrhofer1, Swathish Thazhath Johnce1, Christian Zeirzer2, Kerstin Meder3

1
Primetals Technologies Austria GmbH
Turmstrasse 44, Linz, Upper Austria, Austria, 4031
Phone: +43 732 6592 73839
Email: andreas.rohrhofer@primetals.com
2
voestalpine AG
voestalpine-Straße 1, Linz, Upper Austria, Austria, 4020
3
AG der Dillinger Hüttenwerke
Werkstraße 1, Dillingen/Saar, Germany, 66763

Keywords: Pallet Car Tracking, Ladle Tracking, Torpedo Tracking, Diagnosis, Condition Monitoring, BF, EAF, Converter,
data based services

INTRODUCTION
Fully automatic detection of moving vessels like ladles, slagpots, torpedos, etc. is a common requirement in the steel
industry. Extensive heat, dust, smoke and changing lighting conditions are known problems which are complicating this task.
Primetals Technologies Austria GmbH has a new approach to overcome these problems. Basis is the three-dimensional
measurement of the vessel surface. The recognition and evaluation of characteristics and unique features leads to the
identification of the equipment.

DISCUSSION

Pallet Car Tracking based on identification of 3 dimensional features

The detection of moving equipment is often difficult. Extensive heat, dust, smoke and changing lighting conditions make
RFID or optical technologies often impossible. Therefore using 3D sensor technology for measuring the surface and its
unique features to identify equipment opens up a wide range of new opportunities.
The used 3D measurement system is based on TOF (Time Of Flight) technology. A Time-of-flight camera is working by
illuminating a scene with a light pulse. The camera measures for each pixel the time it takes the light to reach the object and
back again. The required time is directly proportional to the distance. With the known speed of light the Sensor provides for
each pixel the distance of the object imaged. The principle corresponds to the laser scanning with the advantage that an entire
scene is recorded at once. Similar to the laser scanning system is, that the operating temperature is also not affecting the
measurement result what makes the system suitable for tracking tasks of equipment and vessels with very high temperatures.
With a resolution of 2.5cm at a measurement distance of 5m of the 3D system the feature on the equipment to be identified
must be of an adequate size. Identification features with a size of 10x10cm have been successfully identified at a measuring
distance of 3.5m.

Initial situation and raw 3D sensor data

At voestalpine AG all pallet cars are equipped with unique laser cut identification plates. The nameplates are shown in figure
1.

© 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology. 923

 Figure 1: laser cut nameplates on pallet cars at voestalpine AG
The uniqueness of the identification features is absolutely necessary what is obviously in order to track all pallet cars and
their position. The raw distance data for one pallet car provided by the 3D system is shown on figure 2. The values are not
affected by light in the visible range as well as fine dust and steam. This distance information for each pixel of the 3D system
is taken as basis for all further evaluations.

Figure 2: raw distance data of a pallet car side wall with laser cut nameplate
In some cases the pixel information from 3D sensor might be invalid due to reflective surface or some other reasons. The
approach in this evaluation is to adjust the missing pixel value with respect to the pixel values of its neighbors.

Localization of the nameplate

First evaluation step is the isolation of the laser cut nameplate. For that the whole information of the pallet car appearance is
used. Means, the whole surface is characterized and specified by the pallet car construction which is not changing. Knowing
this, stabilization rips, bolts as well as the inclination of the sensor mounting position could be compensated and the
nameplate be isolated out of these data.
Therefore the evaluation algorithm is searching for specific patterns in the continuous measurement data. If a nameplate is
found between two rips the area where the nameplate is located is cropped. See figure 3

924 © 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology.

 Figure 3: cropping area with nameplate

Perspective corrections
Furthermore two surface planes were defined, one parallel to the sensor mounting position and one for the orientation of the
nameplate (figure 4, left). Using standard matrix rotation mathematics it is possible, to transform the distance values from the
nameplate plane to the sensor plane. The result is a normalized nameplate distance matrix showing the number in an
optimized reading angle shown in figure 4 (right.

Sensor mounting orientation plane

nameplate orientation plane

Figure 4: transformed nameplate to optimal reading angle

Binarization
By applying standard thresholding to the image a ,a plane x’y’ which is parallel and very close to the nameplate plane could
be found. Therfore pixels over x’y’ represents the text and below represents the background (Figure 5).

Figure 5: normalized image

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To get a binary image for OCR all pixels above x’y’ plane are set to black and pixels on nameplate plane are set to white.
Furthermore morphological functions were applied in order to delete remaining fragments within the image.

Pallet car number identification with OCR

For number recognition Tesseract library is used. This library uses trained data files for letter or text identification. In this
application the numbers on the pallet cars were not supported, therefore a custom made font has to be trained first.
In order to optimize the OCR result the tesseract library has to be trained with data files according to the font type used on the
name plates. These data files have the features of the text, what increases the accuracy of output. Figure 6 shows the font type
used for pallet car identification.

Figure 6: font type used for pallet car identification

Ladle Tracking based on the identification of 3 dimensional feature

Tracking ladles is based on the same system as tracking pallet cars, only the identification plate is changed according to
different side conditions.
The first approach of tracking casting ladles at Dillinger was by using 3 dimensional hole plates weld directly onto the ladle
sidewall. As there is no electronics integrated in the hole plate, the mounting position itself is not critical or limited by high
ladle temperature. The mounting position right under the purging connectors ensures adequate protection as well as the
identification of the hole plate at each tracking location. Figure 7 shows the mounting position.

Figure 7: hole plate mounted on casting ladle at Dillinger

The hole plate is again unique for each ladle characterized by the location, amount, size and shape of the holes in the plate.
The shape of the hole plate shown in figure 7 is advantageous because dust and dirt cannot accumulate and harm the
identification.

926 © 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology.

 Figure 8: preprocessed sensor data
Figure 8 shows the preprocessed and filtered sensor distance data. Also in this field of application ladle dimensions like ladle
diameter and surface features are taken into consideration. Therefore simplified and normalized data could be provided in
order to identify the location and amount of holes in the hole plate (see figure 9). Weighting of the holes according to their
position provides the number of the vessel.

ladle detected: #53

Figure 9: weighing the holes according to their location provides the ladle number
Independent from the hole plate, the casting ladles at Dillinger are also providing numbers (Figure 10).
In order to be consistent with the actual trends of customized ladle identification for minimal adaption and vessel
modification also the identification of these numbers were examined.

© 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology. 927

 Figure 10: casting ladles at Dillinger
To make matters worse for the identification, the numbers are only 2cm thick and therefore only little security against
contamination was given. Figure 11 shows the raw sensor data at a measurement distance of 2.2m to the ladle.

Figure 11: raw sensor data at a distance of 2.2m (left) and pre calculated data (right)
The first evaluation step is compensating the ladle surface. For this calculation again the whole information of the vessel is
taken into consideration. The result including the 2cm thick number is shown in figure 11 (right).
The noise in the pre calculated data (see figure 11, right) could be reduced by applying standard filters. The result is shown in
Figure 12. The data is again provided to the number identification library which returns the identified number. Special
training of the OCR library was not necessary for identification of the numbers mounted on the ladles.

928 © 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology.

 Figure 12: Sensor result after optimization

Possibilities and future applications

Beside vessel and equipment tracking using 3D sensor technologies opens up a large field of new applications.
Using the sensor data it is also possible to monitor dangerous areas. For example, if a person is walking inside a monitored
area the system could subsequently inform the operator personnel or reduce the speed of moving cranes in order to ensure the
safety of the personnel on the shop floor (Figure 13).

Figure 13: personnel in front of a ladle

Another new application which could easily combined with the ladle tracking task is the check if purging air connectors are
installed or not at a treating station. This could be checked right before the vessel is moved into a VD for example. On the
other hand it is also possible to ensure that all connections to the vessel are disconnected before the ladle is moved away.
Figure 14 is showing 3D measurement data of connected and unconnected purging air tubes.

Figure 14: plugged (left) and unplugged (right) purging gas tubes

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In order to ensure the proper function of the identification equipment it is also possible to check if any obstacle is in between
the sensor and the identification feature. For future automated crane handling applications, this sensor technology could also
be used to measure the exact position of the ladle before the crane picks it up.

CONCLUSIONS
With test installations at voestalpine AG and Dillinger it was possible to show, that Primetals Technologies Austria GmbH
could provide a fully automated vessel and equipment tracking system based on TOF sensor technology.
The Tracking System can be utilized for all fully automated tracking tasks where temperature or changing light conditions are
limiting the use of RFID or optical identification systems.
The temperature of the equipment to be tracked is not affecting the sensor measurement data and subsequently the
identification. Because there is no electronic equipment mounted on the vessel to be tracked, the system could be used for
extreme high temperature vessel tracking applications.
If an equipment or vessel is already providing unique features, it is possible to use these features for identification. However,
it has to be taken into account that these identification features must fulfill certain criterias in order to be recognized by the
system.

REFERENCES
1. T. Kurzmann, F. Hartl, A. Rohrhofer, P. Aufreiter, ”Latest Innovations of Technological Automation Packages for
Steelmaking Plants” ESTAD 2015 Proceedings, Düsseldorf
2. A. Rohrhofer, T. Kurzmann, F. Hartl, P. Aufreiter, ”Advanced Automation Solution for Steelmaking and
Environmental Plants” AISTECH 2016 Proceedings, Pittsburgh
3. R. Smith, “An overview of the tesseract OCR Engine”, ICDAR 2007, Curitibar Brazil
4. Shi Zhixin, Setlur Srirangaraj and Govindaraju Venu, “Digital Image Enhancement Using Normalization Techniques
and their Application to Palm Leaf Manuscripts” CEDAR 2005, New York U.S.A.

930 © 2019 by the Association for Iron & Steel Technology.