Forklift News - PATRICK INNOVATIONS TO SEE AUTOMATED MACHINERY REPLACING AUSSIE WHARFIES

SYDNEY, Australia -- Patrick The Australian Stevedore, one of Australia's largest waterfront companies, is testing an automated container handling system which will boost productivity by replacing "wharfies" with robots.

Patrick executive director Chris Corrigan says the "driverless straddle", currently being developed at the University of Sydney's Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR), eliminates the need for drivers to perform functions such as lifting, moving and stacking containers at ports.

"In developing the automated machine, ACFR has made one of the first fully free-ranging field robotic vehicles anywhere in the world," Mr Corrigan said.

The straddle's innovations include a high2Dintegrity navigation system based on millimetre wave radar, wheel encoders and inertial navigation. Global positioning systems, infra-red lights and sonic sensors direct the straddles and guide them to containers.

The driverless straddle would considerably reduce employee numbers at Australia's ports. Patrick was at the centre of a waterfront dispute in 1998 ith the Maritime Union of Australia over employees' enterprise bargaining greements.

Union workers manned picket lines in protest at the proposed agreements, hich saw a reduction in manual labour at Australia's ports.

Australian Peak Shippers' Association president Frank Beaufort said the eforms had seen a quicker turnaround of some ships, but promised conomic benefits had not eventuated.

Patrick had approached the ACFR in 1996 to develop a conceptual design or an automated straddle carrier. The prototype was first demonstrated to he industry at Patrick's Port Botany, Sydney, terminal in late 1998. The ACFR and Patrick have joined Kalmar Industries, of Finland, the world's largest straddle manufacturer, to develop the project.

Other international companies are taking an interest in developing automated machinery, with the benefits being reduced manual labour and human error and therefore less compensation claims.

Komatsu is currently developing driverless mining machinery, using collision detection systems on its 200 tonne mining trucks. The trucks are capable of detecting objects such as a person lying on the ground up to 100 metres away.

British Aerospace is working with the ACFR to develop automated flight platforms with radar and vision terrain sensors, data fusion and navigation algorithms.

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