Yeah, gate handling is a bit obscure, mainly because it's about the oldest code in the mod and was designed to stop carts based on external circuit activity, not so much to auto detect carts and then open.
You can currently detect a cart using a constant combinator next to the path just before the gate (cart sends its C(n) id signal to the CC while passing), and from that and an adjacent wall trigger a gate opening. May need a bit of a delay built in with a timing circuit.
The gate opening equipment is an interesting idea...