As shipping containers are getting more and more applications from skate parks to swimming pools, it is becoming very obvious that we haven’t seen everything that these steel crates can do. Now they developing a different kind of shipping container system for military and maritime industry.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing a solution that helps organizations providing humanitarian assistance and disaster relief support over broad coastal areas. DARPA’s idea is to use standardized ISO shipping containers that form a platform for emergency helicopters to land. The floating shipping container system also offers accommodation facilities for its crew.
The solution will be designed to offer assistance to navy forces by freeing military ships to carry out other military missions. Tactically Expandable Maritime Platform (TEMP) consists of core-support modules that offer all the life support needed by the crew and delivery vehicles. The delivery vehicles, Captive Air Amphibious Transporters (CAAT), utilize air-filled pontoons that make the containers float. The crew will receive its supplies via unmanned air-delivery system.
The system has been simulated at the GRASP Lab of the university of Pennsylvania where scientists have demonstrated how the containers utilize GPS to easily assemble a floating platform. It would be interesting to know if the system could be controlled by artificial intelligence distributed with every container. Such system could be implemented with flocking algorithms that makes the containers organize independently just like a flock of birds. Bringing this technology into play could be the next innovational step towards rescuing human lives.
As already mentioned, this ambitious project uses ordinary standardized shipping containers. We in Shanghai Metal Corporation provide those containers worldwide. Please visit our website for more information or send us an inquiry. Remember to check our social media sites Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.
Tuomas P. // SMC Editor
Pictures and original articles: Inhabitat, Makezine, DARPA, Wikipedia on Flocking, Flocking Algorithms on Jouni Smed’s lecture slides, Navy Live
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