Autonomous Mobile Cargo Handlers For Carrier Automation

The next generation of aircraft carrier, CVNX, must achieve significant reductions in man-power to meet its required operational requirements while reducing the amount of manual labor aboard the ship by 70% and substantially reducing the size of the crew.To achieve these reductions in man-power it is necessary for the Navy to adopt specific forms of automation to relieve sailors from otherwise onerous and physically exhausting manual labor associated with tasks such as stowing goods during and afterunderway replenishment. (UNREP). During the Phase I program, Orbital Research has: identified the functional requirements of automation to necessary to perform this task; developed a notional series of automated equipment to move cargo aboard aircraftcarriers during automated replenishment operations, and implemented a hybrid continuous time / discrete event simulation suitable for evaluating a number of different materials handling system configurations and options to determine the most applicablesystem for cargo handling during both UNREP and normal operations. These autonomous materials handling units are controlled using a version of the Orbital Research Unified Control Solution, which allows the integration of both low-level and high-leveltask coordination and management. The Phase II program will build upon the foundation laid by the Phase I program to further refine the design of these system components. Then Orbital Research will fabricate a scale-model hardware to demonstrationspecific critical system capabilities to reduce overall program risk and lay the foundation for a Phase III transition.BENEFITS: The Orbital Research Unified Control Solution is a readily adaptable design giving it diverse commercial applications.Commercial applications include: handling heavy payloads in difficult environments such as heavy manufacturing facility automation, metal forming operations, large component assembly processes, high speed flexible manufacturing for large scale components,and underway ship automation.