Tethered Air's Robotic Balloon Crane Can Make Any Shore A Seaport

Even though Seaports play an important role in the global economy, the way they are seen and used has not changed significantly since the 1950's. Tethered Air Design is about to change something drastically, if implemented successfully. It is an air-supported robotic crane that doesn't need a seaport to operate. Just about any shore anywhere in the world would do.

Jeremy Wiley, founder of Tethered Air, came up with this idea when he was a U.S. Marine in Kuwait before the invasion of Iraq. He found that the military had a lot of problems in transporting through the seaports efficiently and on time. He thought of deploying things using a robotic crane by providing cargo access to any point on ground and then transiting that cargo at high speeds over complex topographies without the severe costs of air vehicles and the physical constraints of powered flight. His design is an atmospherically-lifted (like an aerostat or a kite) multi-tethered structure that uses primary structural anchor lines  connecting between ground anchors and the apex and a cargo-handling module with secondary cargo positioning lines.



If such a giant robotic balloon lift is set up for an estimated cost of $7-10 million that could lift heavy containers from the ship to shore and back, that is way too cheap as compared to the cost of building an actual seaport. Wiley's idea is still at an conceptual stage and needs funding. Robotics researchers at Harvard University and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have started taking interest in this project. Let us see if this can really revolutionize the way seaports are used.

Check out Jeremy Wiley explaining his concept in this video -



Source: Robot Balloon Cranes Could Revolutionize World's Seaports | Live Science | #-Link-Snipped-#