The U.S. Navy is the most powerful in the world. It has a biggest and newest combat vessels, such as aircraft carrier.
On these ships, thousands of sailors carry out their tasks: moves bombs and missiles around the deck, arming the aircraft before missions.
The U.S. Navy Engineers at the Robotics and Intelligent Systems Engineering (RISE) Laboratory at Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division Lakehurst, N.J. at this moment are researching how robots can be used to simplify activities on carrier decks, said in the report by the Armed with Science.
Specifically, the team is exploring how it can use robotics to reduce the number of sailors needed for the task of moving supplies around on an aircraft carrier’s deck. Ultimately, the goal is to have one sailor use a control panel to direct a robot to do the job that a small team of sailors currently does.
What started as a two-person robotics team at NAWCAD Lakehurst led to the founding of the Robotics Intelligence Systems Engineering, or RISE, Laboratory in 2014, for which Hing serves as lab manager.
“We look at how we can apply the benefits of robotics, the benefits of autonomy and artificial intelligence to addressing some of the current needs of the ALRE and SE missions,” said Hing. “We apply robotics to different taskings to try to improve efficiency, optimize workload and improve safety.”
Hing recently submitted papers to peer-reviewed journals and conferences on research demonstrating the capability of multi-robotic vehicle control by a single operator.
RISE engineers hope the use of robotics will improve efficiency and safety, as well as optimize sailors’ workloads, freeing them from more monotonous jobs.