Military personnel loading military cargo planes with trucks and material can speed up the process and reduce the chances for mistakes with weigh-in-motion technology being developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Dave Beshears of the lab's Engineering Science and Technology Division notes that the ORNL system is five to six times faster than the static scales in use today. And, because the system is automated, there's little chance of mistakes common to methods that rely on manual scales, tape measures, calculators, paper and pencil. Determining the weight, center of balance and profile of a vehicle being transported is critical to avoiding crashes such as the one that occurred in June 2002 involving an Air Force MC-130H. The seven-month project funded by the Department of Defense began in November.
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