Successful remote-controlled wood chip scraper trials completed

 Monday, May 6, 2024

Nippon Paper and the trucking company Iwakuni Sangyo Unyu have successfully conducted trials with a remote-controlled robot designed to scrape wood chips in the hold of a wood-chip carrier at the Iwakuni mill. This innovative scraping robot is intended to enhance safety and address workforce shortages in wood-chip scraping operations.

Through the development of the scraping robot, the companies involved will work to realise a safe and sustainable cargo-handling environment. In the future, the four companies, NYK, Nippon Paper Industries, Chinougijutsu and Iwakuni Sangyo Unyu, aim to realize a cargo-handling environment where not only men but also women, elderly people, and people with disabilities can engage in cargo handling by operating robots from remote locations away from the cargo-handling site.

In this trial, a prototype scraping robot was operated on a wood-chip carrier engaged in a long-term transport contract with Nippon Paper Industries and NYK. The four companies operated the robot remotely in the ship’s hold for about two hours during cargo unloading and achieved the goals, including confirming the scraping robot’s functionality.

Reasons to use wood chips

Properly installing mulch around the trunk of a plant is essential to any tree or shrub’s health. But not all types of mulch are created equal. There are several choices, but only one provides more benefits to your plants than others: wood chips.

Wood chips are naturally occurring byproducts made from large chunks of tree branches and trunks, resulting from the pruning of trees, rather than heavily processed hardwood. This cleaner form of mulch offers numerous benefits to trees and shrubs.

Wood Chips benefits include:

• Feeds the soil
• Regulates temperature
• Regulates moisture
• Reduces waste
• Free and readily available
• Visually attractive
• Suppress weeds
• Prevent damage to trunk from mowers or string trimmers
• Eliminates the need for chemical inputs
• Does not become hydrophobic

Wood chips are a win for everyone: people and planet. They are also an easy way to greatly improve the health of trees, ensuring they live longer. And with all of the environmental challenges facing our planet, we need as many healthy trees as possible.

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