United States Nrec Tender

A yellow steel structure constructed this fall in front of Carnegie Mellon Universitys National Robotics Engineering Center NREC will become the largest robot ever constructed in the 22-year history of the organization.Its 45-foot-tall gantry visible from Pittsburghs 40th Street Bridge was built as part of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers prototyping project to automate its annual mat-sinking operations on the Mississippi River. The massive mats which consist of concrete blocks wired together shield riverbanks from erosion helping to protect levees and ensure safe river navigation.As big as it is the prototype robot being built on NRECs front lawn will serve only to test and further develop systems that will become part of the final much larger robot a floating factory called ARMOR1 that eventually will be deployed on barges on the Mississippi.The NREC gantry supports a 55-foot-long 24-ton arm that is about 20 feet above the ground. A carriage suspended from the arm will have two hoists for picking up transporting and positioning concrete blocks so they can be tied together with wire to create the mats. Each concrete square is 25 feet-long 4-feet-wide and 3inches thick and weighs 3600 pounds.A deck has been installed for moving four rows of concrete blocks as they are tied together in the final deployed robot the conveyance system also will launch the completed mats into the river.An automated mat-tying system now being built and tested inside the NREC building in Pittsburghs Lawrenceville section will be added to the outdoor assemblage in mid-2019.The test system is an unconventional robot and bigger than any previous NREC projects including a system for the U.S. Air Force to remove coatings from aircraft using 3-story-high laser-equipped mobile robots and an autonomous mine truck for Caterpillar.