<正>Due to the boom in world trade with leaps and bounds, port authorities are looking into ways of making facilities more efficient. To build Shanghai as the international shipping center, it is the strategic step to found Shanghai as the international container hub port. To cope with this dynamic challenge, the Shanghai port must improve the competitive ability. Now the existing piling capability of the container yard is not satisfied the requirement. The most advanced automated container terminals based on the use of AGVs (Automated Guided Vehicles). But it doesn’t accord with the port environment of Shanghai. New massive container ships and scarcity of the yard land put an enormous pressure on port authorities to find and deploy effective container handling systems in order to increase the throughput of the current container terminals. So the automatic and unmanned empty container yard (AUECY) is proposed in the paper, which is constructed and located in Shanghai Port Container Co., Ltd. Waigaoqiao Terminal Branch. In AUECY, the automated handling system in relay is adopted, which is the new process procedure and uses two new types of RMG.Also a simulation model is developed and used to simulate this new AUECY and evaluate its performance. The simulation results show that AUECY can be effectively adopted in combination with the optimized loading, unloading list and lower waiting time. Moreover, the simulation shows that AUECY can reduce the number of crane conflicts on the yard and the average length of the truck queues in the terminal. Therefore the new process procedure of the AUECY and its simulation results help to improve the efficiency, and the capacity of container yard, and meet the future demand of the container terminal of Shanghai international shipping center.