05/12/05 Goodbye, seamen; hello, robots
Benedict Engineering Co. unveils prototype of cargo-handling system (By Juana Jordan)

In the next couple of years, it won't be seamen moving and storing cargo on military ships. Instead, it'll be an automatic, remote-control handling system designed by a local engineering and design firm doing it - even while at sea.

On Thursday, Benedict Engineering Co. showed off a prototype of the new robotic system, known as an Automatic System Retrieval System, to about 25 Navy officers and civilian contractors.
The demonstration was the culmination of a $2 million grant the company won two years ago to develop, design and build a prototype.

"This gives us a toy to feel, touch and go back over and redesign," said Wesley White, Benedict's director of business development.

The handling system, which is still a few years out, will make it easier and faster for ships to get to what they need, whether it be ammunition or food. Currently, the process is done with forklifts and manually by hundreds of sailors who form human chains. And in most cases, the ships must dock to get access to the cargo.

"This is very innovative," said Gary Good, project engineer, research and concept development official who works with aircraft carriers with the Virginia-based Northrop Grumman Corp.

It operates like that of a remote control car with the capability to move in any direction. Only it looks more like an open-platform elevator.

It works like this: Laser beams guide the system and align it between steel storage racks. The system then locks onto the sides of the rack before robotic arms extend out to retrieve cargo containers. Depending on where the unit will be placed, the system can move up or down the storage racks.

It can move 3,000 to 4,000 pounds and 333 pallets an hour. A ship usually brings on 500 to 600 pallets every eight to 10 days.

Another retrieval system, already built in Norfolk, Va., by BEC, can be suspended from the top of the cargo hold and is able to lift and move 55,000 pound, 50-foot containers. BEC officials are trying to secure $3 million to complete its development.

The new system, which is the first to retrieve and store containers, also can be adapted to be used on aircraft and in warehouses. Good said other companies are developing either storage or transportation systems. None have systems that can both retrieve and store.

"Its flexibility seems to be of the nature we're expecting it to displace large teams of manpower," Good said.

Benedict, a 50-employee firm founded in 1982, had the concept for such a system during the late 1980s when BEC founder Charles E. Benedict designed it.

But the Navy wasn't interested then, he said.

"It wasn't until they had a need that they finally decided to talk to us," Benedict said.

Contact reporter Juana Jordan at (850) 599-2321 or jrjordan@tallahassee.com.