Aiming at improving the anti-swing effect of automated rail mounted container gantry crane(ARMG) during its unmanned hoisting and handling work at the automated terminal, an active anti-swing method using the spreader auxiliary wire rope as traction was proposed. By the auxiliary wire rope, the traction is used to restrain the swing of spreader and consume its swing kinetic energy, thus the swing amplitude of the spreader can be reduced to the safe ranges to realize the anti-swing target. Firstly, the dynamic model of the active anti-swing can be set up, then the traction force of auxiliary wire rope is equivalent to the damping of spreader, and the actual traction force can be calculated by obtaining the equivalent damping. Throughout the simulation of the active anti-swing process of different trolley travelling schemes and different typical heave height, the swing response of spreader and the size of traction force applied by the auxiliary wire ropes could be acquired and it verified the effectiveness of the anti-swing strategy and the correctness of the equivalent damping calculation. Finally, taking a certain ARMG produced by Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Company(ZPMC) as an experimental object, experimental verification was carried out at typical heave height, and the output moment of the auxiliary motor obtained by experiment verified the feasibility of the active anti-swing method and its practicability in the actual application.