Abstract : The purpose of this paper is to establish a highly automated and technologically advanced ship tonnage measurement system. Traditional manual measurement methods can no longer meet the needs of modern development. Based on the needs of tonnage measurement of ships passing through locks in China, and considering the characteristics of inland waterway vessels, this paper proposes a camera array system based on stereo vision, incorporating the emerging machine vision technology. This system features automation, non-contact operation, high precision, versatility, and system functional expandability. Currently, there are no reports on the application of similar technologies in the field of ship tonnage measurement, making the proposed measurement scheme innovative. Keywords : Ship tonnage; Machine vision; Camera array; Stereo vision 1. Introduction Currently, lockage fees are based on gross tonnage. The determination of gross tonnage is achieved through a combination of manual on-site measurement and reference to the gross tonnage provided in the navigation book. However, during the collection process, it has been found that there is a certain error between the tonnage (deadweight tonnage and gross tonnage) provided in the ship's navigation certificate and the tonnage determined on-site, which brings certain difficulties to the collection of lockage fees and the management of locks. The specific problems are as follows: 1) Currently, various phenomena such as multiple toll certificates for one vessel, small toll certificates for large vessels, and fake toll certificates still exist, causing navigation documents to lose their due authority; 2) During the collection of lockage fees, laws and regulations do not provide sufficient basis for verifying the vessel's navigation documents, making it difficult to recover evaded lockage fees and resulting in a large loss of lockage fees. It can be seen that the current charging method has many unreasonable aspects in practical application and is clearly no longer suitable for the requirements of current development. In response to this situation, the current method for determining the gross tonnage of vessels passing through locks and the charging model are readjusted, replacing manual measurement with automatic vessel measurement to measure the main external data of the vessel, and researching and developing an automatic measurement and charging system for vessels passing through locks. [Full text of the research on a machine vision-based vessel tonnage measurement system is available for download.]