Robotics Tomorrow profiles CRG Automation’s projects for the U.S. Army

Revamped automation systems improved efficiency and safety of chemical weapon destruction

OCTOBER 12, 2021 — LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY — Robotics Tomorrow today published an in-depth look at CRG Automation’s projects with the U.S. Department of Defense to more efficiently and safely destroy the Army’s aging stockpile of chemical weapons.

Staring down an aggressive 2023 destruction deadline, the military took the unprecedented step in mid-2019 of rethinking the entire process. With that ambitious timeline in mind, the government activated a contracting mechanism first established in NASA’s 1950s race to space to bring in private-sector industry leaders and turned to CRG Automation to help develop the critical systems needed.

“As a past member of the military, this project took on a special importance for me,” said CRG Automation President James DeSmet. “The perplexing engineering problems to solve, the rapidly approaching deadline and the severity of the chemical agents involved all added up to a challenge we wanted to tackle. We’ve often talked here at CRG about how our engineers like the kind of problems that leave other R&D teams scratching their heads or banging them against the wall. We knew this was an opportunity unlike any other, and, even staring down the pandemic, we knew we could do it.”

Click here to read the article published by Robotics Tomorrow, which features products, companies, news, articles and events for the industrial automation, robotics and unmanned vehicle industries. With an emphasis on the state-of-the-art and on-the-horizon technologies that have strong prospects of commercialization, the publication’s philosophy is to create an outlet where the industry can share information.