All clear for trucks – Messer Austria’s fully automated barrier control
Messer Austria, located in Lower Austria, produces gases for various applications, from industrial to medical uses. Given the numerous potential hazards at the Gumpoldskirchen site, the company prioritizes minimizing risks. A key safety measure is controlling vehicle movement on and off the premises. To achieve this, a fully automated barrier system equipped with a LiDAR sensor ensures that only trucks can access a specific thoroughfare, while the barrier remains closed to cars and other unauthorized vehicles.
The function of a barrier is much like that of a hockey goalkeeper, ensuring nothing unauthorized gets through. When a goalie misses a puck and lets it slip into the goal, it certainly doesn’t please the home fans. Similarly, Christian Bücker at Messer Austria faced frustrations with an unreliable barrier system that frequently malfunctioned. The barrier’s smart sensor for vehicle detection often failed, leading to false openings—a risky situation, especially in an environment with hazardous substances.
Gas as a safety hazard
The production, storage, and transport of gases involve significant risks, necessitating stringent safety measures. At Messer, every visitor receives a safety briefing upon arrival. Christian Bücker, who oversees the maintenance and optimization of the company’s systems, emphasizes the hidden dangers of gases.
“Gases are too often underestimated because you can’t see them and because the danger can also creep up on you. That makes special precautionary measures necessary,” Bücker said.
The Gumpoldskirchen plant manufactures industrial gases, food, and medical gases.
“Food gases include CO2 and nitrogen – the medical gases produced here are oxygen and nitric oxide (NO). NO is mainly used for the treatment of respiratory problems,” Bücker said. “Most air gases that we manufacture and store here in our plant are more or less inert and thus fairly unreactive.”
That doesn't preclude the presence of risks, however. Oxygen, for example, while not dangerous in principle, is however an oxidizing agent.
Safe transport
Due to the sensitive products that are produced at Messer, the company needs to control the traffic on its site.
“The barrier system needs to open as few times as possible but as often as necessary – namely whenever a truck approaches,” Bücker said.
As the main arrivals and departures of vehicles are processed at a single gate, this is a demanding undertaking.
“There is also a customer area on the site. We need to separate the heavy traffic – which must drive far onto the site – from customer cars. We set up a fully automated barrier system at the plant site that is intended to allow trucks through but not cars, forklift trucks and pedestrians,” Bücker said. “This is not exactly easy to do, as around 20 years of experience has shown. We kept trying out new technical solutions from different suppliers – nothing really worked satisfactorily. False openings and faults kept occurring. That's why we turned to the sensor specialist SICK last year, who surprised us with a perfect solution.”
The system uses an LMS1xx 2D LiDAR sensor that features a field evaluation with flexible fields. Similar sensors from the 2D LiDAR family are often used on autobahns for Vehicle Hotspot Detection (VHD), where they detect the size of a vehicle and create a cross-sectional model of every truck. What temperature range the vehicle falls into is determined using a thermal camera.
If the brakes of the truck are overheating or there is a problem with the load, then the truck will be prevented, for example, from entering a tunnel. The situation and requirements at the Gumpoldskirchen plant are completely different, however.
Joint tests were convincing
“We wanted to make sure that the LiDAR sensor is the right solution for this application and our specific environment in particular – there are 120 kV electrical cables running under the road – and all settings on the device work perfectly,” said Ulrich Wasinger, Market Product Specialist at SICK Austria. “That’s why we spent a whole day performing calibrations on trucks, cars, forklift trucks and pedestrians with the assistance of Messer. It paid off – the results were convincing.”
Ingo Wegscheider, Regional Sales Manager at SICK Austria, elaborated on the advanced features of the LMS131 sensor.
“On the LMS131, you can preconfigure a blanking size on the sensor. At the same time, it is also possible to define vehicles according to their size,” Wegscheider said. “Both length and width are detected for this purpose. A switching instruction is only sent to the barrier if the vehicle is higher or wider than 1.8 meters.”
Bücker further explained the specific configuration of the sensor to enhance site security and operational efficiency.
“The sensor is configured so that no forklift trucks are let through. In the event that a larger transport of goods to the customer parking area is necessary, the forklift truck driver can still open the barrier by means of a radio signal,” Bücker said.
Clear view in wind and weather
As part of the long-term testing at Messer, the capability of the sensor in fog, rain, snowfall and with reflections from sunlight and headlights was checked over an entire winter. Here too the 2D LiDAR sensor always maintained a “clear view” and reliably demonstrated its advantages compared to other technologies – for example cameras. That earned it a big “thumbs up” from Messer – the LMS131 was then “officially” ordered on account of its convincing performance.
The solution has now been in use at Messer for almost a year and Christian Bücker is full of praise.
“I can say that the solution from SICK works flawlessly, regardless of the weather. We have not established any false barrier openings to-date. I am very happy that the ongoing ‘barriers’ issue has thereby finally been successfully resolved,” Bücker said.
