Carnegie Mellon’s NREC Building Largest Robot for US Corps of Engineers

"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, four-feet-wide and three inches thick and weighs 3,600 pounds.

…The Corps of Engineers’ ARMOR 1 final prototype robot will dwarf this current test system. It will have six of the 55-foot arms for moving concrete squares. The assembly barge will measure 180 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high, said Gabriel Goldman, technical lead for the project at NREC. It will produce mats with 35 rows of concrete squares."  Photos courtesy of CMU/NREC.  For the full story, please click here.