MARINE DESIGN CENTER STEERS “ARMOR 1” FORWARD ALONG MULTIPLE TRACKS

BY ED VOIGT, Philadelphia District

Replacing a complex and truly unique system like the Mat Sinking Unit sounds like no simple task – and indeed it is not. The next-generation Armor 1 is actually being developed as two distinct subsystems, each with its own project team, that will ultimately be combined into one. And the responsibility for bringing it all together for the Vicksburg District falls to the Army’s “boat builders”: the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Marine Design Center.

Armor 1, designed to double mat placement capacity while increasing worker safety and lowering operating costs, will integrate a robotically controlled superstructure atop a new and improved mat boat.

Team members to date include Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC); naval architecture and marine engineering firm Bristol Harbor Group, Inc. (BHGI); SIA Solutions LLC, coordinating the overall design effort; and, of course, the customer, Vicksburg District, fully engaged in all phases and aspects of the project. Still to be added are the shipyard that will construct the barge, and the contractor that will build the full-scale robotics package and then combine and deliver the two systems as one.

Armor 1 prototype with lifting arm gantry and mat deck structure, already the largest robot ever built by Carnegie Mellon’s National Robotics Engineering Center.

USACE PHOTO

Currently, mat sinking is a very labor-intensive process. Four gantry cranes move concrete squares from supply barges to an assembly barge (the mat boat), where workers use pneumatic tools to wire the mat together into 16 square sections. As the mat is being assembled, the assembly barge inches away from shore to launch the mat along the sloping river banks.

NREC is designing the new robotic cranes and tying gantry, which will fully automate this mat sinking process. As more squares are placed on the launch deck, winches pay out cable, allowing the concrete fabric to slide down the launch deck. Once the appropriate number of squares have been connected, automatic clamping and tying units will cut the cables and let the mat slide off into the river.

Completion of the initial design was followed by the prototype phase to test and validate its key elements. The prototype alone is already the largest robot ever built by NREC – a unit of the Robotics Institute, the largest robotics R&D organization in the world.

Its 45-foot-tall gantry supports a single 55-foot-long, 24-ton arm that is about 20 feet above the ground. A carriage suspended from the arm is equipped with two hoists for picking up, transporting, and positioning concrete squares so they can be tied together with wire to create the mats. Each concrete “square” is 25 feet long, 4 feet wide, and 3 inches thick, and weighs 3,600 pounds.

A deck has been installed for moving four rows of concrete squares as they are tied together by an automated mat tying system; in the final, deployed robot, the conveyance system also will launch the completed mats into the river.

Meanwhile, BHGI was tasked to design, size, and specify details for the new mat boat, mat assembly process, and mat placement process. This has involved coordinating with NREC to ensure that the structure for the mat deck can incorporate the robotics that will be installed over it.

Under the new design, the mat boat itself will be a double-ended raked barge with another rake along the length of the starboard side to allow it to get as close to the shore as possible. It will be larger than the current mat boat to accommodate the faster production rate.

Additional safety and operational improvements include four deck houses, one at each corner of the mat boat, that will allow operators to see the entire launch deck and supply barge operation as well as provide redundancy; and larger cable reels, which will reduce the number of times crew members have to splice and work with the cable. Electric hoists and monorails will move the larger reels in and out of the reel alley.

As big as it is, the abovementioned prototype will be dwarfed by the final, much larger robot – the brains of the floating factory called Armor 1 that eventually will be deployed on barges along the Mississippi. It will have not just one, but six, of the 55-foot arms for moving concrete squares. Once installed on the new mat boat, Armor 1 will measure approximately 180 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high, and it will produce mats with 35 rows of concrete squares. n