shipyard to get exoskeletons

[dragon]

Workers building the world’s biggest ships could soon don robotic exoskeletons to lug around 100-kilogram hunks of metal as if they’re nothing

AT A sprawling shipyard in South Korea, workers dressed in wearable robotics were hefting large hunks of metal, pipes and other objects as if they were nothing.

It was all part of a test last year by Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, at their facility in Okpo-dong. The company, one of the largest shipbuilders in the world, wants to take production to the next level by outfitting staff with robot exoskeletons that give them superhuman strength.

Gilwhoan Chu, the lead engineer for the firm's research and development arm, says the pilot showed that the exoskeleton does help workers perform their tasks. His team is working to improve the prototypes so that they can go into regular use in the shipyard, where robots already run a large portion of a hugely complex assembly system.

The exoskeleton fits anyone between 160 and 185 centimetres tall. Workers do not feel the weight of its 28-kilogram frame of carbon, aluminium alloy and steel, as the suit supports itself and is engineered to follow the wearer's movements. With a 3-hour battery life, the exoskeleton allows users to walk at a normal pace and, in its prototype form, it can lift objects with a mass of up to 30 kilograms.

To don the exoskeleton, workers start by strapping their feet on to foot pads at the base of the robot. Padded straps at the thigh, waist and across the chest connect the user to the suit, allowing the robot to move with their bodies as it bears loads for them. A system of hydraulic joints and electric motors running up the outside of the legs links to a backpack, which powers and controls the rig.

Frames designed for individual tasks can be attached to the backpack, with some arcing over a person's head like a small crane. As well as boosting raw lifting ability, the suit helps workers manipulate heavy components precisely: it takes most of the weight, so the user is effectively handling light objects.

Chu says worker feedback from the trial has been mostly positive. Testers were pleased that the exoskeleton let them lift heavy objects repeatedly without strain, but everyone also wanted it to move faster and be able to cope with heavier loads. Chu is working on it. "Our current research target of the lifting capacity is about 100 kilograms," he says.

The world's top three shipbuilding firms are South Korean – Daewoo, Hyundai Heavy Industries and Samsung Heavy Industries – and their shipyards are already renowned for their level of automation. In a study of the firms' facilities in 2012, US Navy personnel found that five out of the six yards they visited used robots in some capacity. At one shipyard, robots did 68 per cent of all welding as well as carrying out jobs from cutting and grinding steel to polishing freshly assembled hulls, with minimal human oversight.

"At the time, most of the yards we toured were significantly more advanced in robotic welding than the US yards performing naval ship construction, and had been for a long time," Gene Mitchell, the retired US Navy officer who led the research told New Scientist.

All this automation goes into building truly gargantuan vessels. Daewoo has a $1.9 billion contract from shipping giant Maersk to build 10 55,000-tonne container ships. Each 400 metres in length, with space for 18,000 containers, they will be the largest of their kind ever built.

As the industry grows, so too will the need for automation, including robotic suits of the kind Daewoo is experimenting with. The prototypes still have several important kinks to be worked out, though. In tests, workers had a hard time negotiating sloping or slippery surfaces. And the prototypes cannot yet cope with twisting motions, so workers making turns while carrying heavy objects could tire out easily.

Still, Chu is committed. "We've been developing and applying robots and automation in shipbuilding for more than a decade," he says. And if he has his way, humans will soon be effortlessly wielding ship parts that weigh more than they do.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Lifting big"

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[Iroscato]

Nice to see technology evolving like this. I foresee an entire industry of exoskeleton manufacturing and repair developing if this takes off, which will create jobs and generally be an awesome outcome.
I guess the training to use one these would be pretty extensive and take some getting used to, particularly with balance issues when carrying heavy loads.

[Cykeisme]

Indeed, even with the added strength provided by the exoskeleton, the relative weight of the person and the load are still vastly more disparate than humans are intuitively accustomed to. We're not used to lifting objects approaching our own weight, much less ten or twenty times more.

Even without going into exoskeleton-aided strength, you can see how the posture required when doing a standing military press (overhead barbell press) starts to differ, as the weights lifted approaches (and eventually exceeds) a person's own bodyweight. The time it takes a person to build that level of muscular strength (likely a couple of years) will allow their motor control to gradually "learn" the required coordination, but that will be absent here.

With the huge load:body mass ratio increase that exoskeletons will enable, no matter how naturally an unloaded person may move in it, even with a lot of training, I can still imagine balance-related accidents occurring. In fact, being able to move very naturally when not carrying a load may sort of "lull" a person into a false sense of normalcy.

[salm]

I´m sure these types of problems are solvable. Either by adding some type of balancing sensors and mechanism if needed or in some other way.

[Simon_Jester]

I suspect there's training involved, much as there would be for operating a forklift. The man pictured in the article certainly seems to be using a well-balanced carrying method.

[Cykeisme]

I suspect there's training involved, much as there would be for operating a forklift. The man pictured in the article certainly seems to be using a well-balanced carrying method.

True, though I suppose the learning curve might be steeper than a forklift, a proper training process would soon be established (and like all dangerous machinery, would be mandatory to obtain an operators license).
Also, since this is already a considerably complex piece of equipment with computers between the user input and the machine's mechanical output, perhaps there could also be safety measures programmed into the control software to prevent hazardous movements, too.

Although perhaps we can agree that the potential and probability of people dicking around with it for fun is considerably higher than a forklift or crane?