This week on The Editor's.

The new steel mil is about to go up in Ambridge, and it sparks new hope for the steel industry.

Dante, the robot has been saved in Alaska, and Carnegie Mellon's creators have new and high hopes for the future of robotics.

Tom Ridge has the last word on crime and politics.

A company called World Class Processing has plans to build a new kind of steel mill along the Ohio River.

Can it make money and rejuvenate the industry?

Matthew Botsford Junior, th CEO of World Class Processing, is the guest of Post-Gazette editor John Craig and staff writer Len Boselovic.

There's been quite a stir in the steel industry around here in the last couple of weeks.

And then what's going on?

Well, a World Class Processing, a small Ambridge company started up two years ago, basically, cleaning and cutting steel coils produced by other stee producers, employees, 65 people.

No big deal.

About a year ago, they started thinking about expanding maybe buying some more equipment for cleaning more types of steel.

Part of that they went to, at a company called Tippins that specializes in steel mill equipment.

Tippins had come u with a new concept for a steel mini mill, something that World Class really didn't have in mind at the time, but they got them interested.

This mill, which Tippins is working on with, Samsung Heavy Industries, their international partner, would be able to melt steel scrap, form that molten steel into slabs and roll the slabs into the type of coils that world class currently processes.

Well, Matt Botsford at World Class and his people were intrigued by the idea.

After 5 or 6 months of intense negotiations, announced last week that they're going to build this mil at a cost of about $340 million.

Projec will create about 450 new jobs and expected to be completed, late 1996.

So he told us before we went on the air that you spent about almost four years getting from this idea to the first stage, and here you come, a lock with this thing.

You go ahead from the some rather modest thing to this huge thing you're doing in about about eight months.

I mean, it's a. How do you feel about this?

Well, it, it really is a large number.

If you take the number and put it all together and total it up.

But, if you look at it the way it's been growing, in a way, it's been planned.

The first $50 million were planned for what we call phases two through four, and that was pretty much planned.

And we had been working towards this as an expansion of your present business.

That's an expansion of our current processing business.

Again, targeted toward niches to help the steel industry and to help, the customers with special applications.

How long is that going to take?

And wha what time are you talking about?

It's going to take this same it'll that all be completed by mid 96 and that's and that's that equipmen and things is been ordered and, and that plan is going to be developed over the next year and a half.

Right.

That's the the first order will probably be placed next week for the first piece of that in phase two.

And then the phase three and four will come right after that, probably the orders being placed in the next month and a half.

Know here's a money from this going to come.

You'r talking about an investment of, you know, over 300, million dollars, three time what the parts are looking for, something like that, or bankers, investor interested in the steel industry these days.

Well, what's, I guess the best way to look at it is what's happened.

Since last Thursday when we announced, we attempted to keep it quiet as long as we could.

Our approach is don't d anything until you have it wired so that you don't get hopes up.

Particularly for a communit that's looking for jobs and all.

You don't like to wave that flag ahead of time, not be able to deliver.

And that's the way we approached it on, our first phase.

This is a little bit different because we had codenamed this Eagle Steel for about five months while, Samsung and Lockwood Green an and the, our friends at Tippins were out gathering bid on various pieces of equipment and checking out the land and the buildings.

But what has happened is, it's hard to keep anything that large quiet for so long.

And people kept pushing.

Where is this Eagle Steel?

Where are they going to be located?

People had us locating everywhere from Mexico to Canada.

So finally w we said, well, it's it's time.

We're going to do it a little premature because all all the financing is not done.

But I will say that, majo chunks have been committed for and the excitement since last Thursday.

I'd love to show you the, the itinerary, what we have planned for from last Thursday to next week.

There's people who want to.

The financial people Oh, people also want to put money in.

Oh, yes.

Yes they do.

They have lenders talking fo you round the other way around.

Right.

It's a welcome change.

Before we were out, pounding everywhere.

Now people would like to be involved.

Many mills have captured the imagination of the steel.

Right.

We.

I don't think it's maybe reasonable to assume people watch.

Just really know what a mini mill is.

What is a mini mill?

A mini mill was a, typical steel mill.

Would make maybe, 3 million tons a year.

4 million tons a year.

You hear those big numbers.

And never less than a million for any operating unit within a major steel mill.

What we're going to do is we're going to make steel to the tune of about.

We will make 750 to 800,000 tons a year.

Plus we'll roll an additional 250 to 300,000 ton.

So what we have, it really is many.

And it's scal wise it's a little bit slower.

But obviousl we were looking for a mini mill that not didn't just make a million tons, but made a million specific tons That is many for people who don't know, just small.

That's what it is.

But there's in other words, you know, you don't have to be just using scrap in mini.

You could, can minis also make make iron?

It will be both.

We use a combination so you so you could do it.

You could do use have basic oxygen first.

And that that's those technologies as well a as using scrap in a mini mill.

So it is only just only about mini.

Is it small?

Small.

You can really make steel in a couple different.

Some people would would use the word nonunio when they describe a mini mill.

If you heard anything from the steelworkers about, about your plan and what they have to do, the role of what's really happened is most of the, mini mills as such, the ba mills, many of those are United Steelworkers and have been so organized, the flat road world basically has moved to the farm communities, and stayed out of the, difficult areas, as they call them.

So there have we've heard, some of our competitio have said that they would never locate in Pittsburgh because of that.

That's not our approach.

Our approach is completely different.

And we mentione and talked about people before, and, that's really what we're all about, is, is people and motivating and and rewarding.

And, we believe this is an excellent location for it if you handle everything properly.

That's one of the things I also want to ask you is, is you've noticed a flurry of activity i the steel industry in this area.

And what I wonder is what's the relationship between that and the location of customers?

I mean, are there a lot of customers close by to us still for steel products?

What you really have to be?

I wouldn't say there's a lot of yes, a little bit of conflict here.

First of all, there are a lot of customers in the area for steel.

But steel no longer is.

Steel is still a steel.

It's specific types of steel.

The mills have become very specific.

And what they do when I was at LTV or J&L when I started, I used to sell everything from track spikes to wire to flat rolled for automobiles.

Today, LTV is basically a flat roll mill.

Similarly at USX, willing pit.

Everybod has a particular product.

Yes.

So what you try to do and wha we try to do on the processing, the biggest single cost outside of making the steel is transporting it.

So the key and the real key for us locating in Pittsburgh or Ambridge specifically, is that we have a tremendous facility for the move.

The rail Conrail East-West lines are outside our door, and we have the river, so.

But you coul but again, I'm just press you.

When you began this business in 1987, I assume that you had customers that were nearby which which recommended the business to begin with.

That is these weren't people in in Iowa or Texas.

Is that right or wrong?

No.

The people were in Iowa.

They were.

So in other words, you can go fairly far afield.

Indeed, as long as you have a niche product and service which somebody wants, you can have that in Ambridge and really and really reach fairly wide with customers.

As long as you're close to the waterwa or have excellent rail service.

A little example, if you shipped a ton of steel across the city of Pittsburg from the Irwin work site, to us, that cost is approximately $66 a ton.

To move it, I can put it on a barge and ship all the way to Hickman, Arkansas for $5 a ton.

So you can see that if you can utilize the water rates you can get in any market you want to get into and be competitive.

And so what you really find is if you're on the water and have good rail access, we can be competitiv anywhere in the country.

Okay.

So now we go to this next thing and we got we've got Tippins.

Hes got a better idea.

Right, right.

And and he why does he have to have a Korean partner.

What does that was that is that what's where do they come into this.

Okay.

The Korean partner is here because they are the acknowledged leader in the world in building casters.

They are the equipment we the people know, I think.

But they didn't know what casters are.

Or at least I hope they do.

Right.

But that's who they are.

So they bring a lot of, tremendous technology to it fro the front end of the business.

Tippins expertise has been in the rolling mill site.

So when you marry these two, you bring, again, two proven technologies.

As we talked about before, we're not out there, trying to play Don Quixote with a whole brand new world.

What we're taking is two, again, proven technologies who have some specific and us oriented flexibility built in.

And that's what we're looking for that can also touch a new level of quality.

So we're after a quality level and a flexibility level that is up until no been unheard of with many mills.

Right now one of the holes in this thing, the holes in this thing is a a lot of people questio the whether this this technology that Tippins and Samsung have put together can do as much as as Tippins and Samsung say, it's say it can obviously met with disagree with tha because he's buying the thing.

But and then when they say do as much as they say what did they say that made the, very thin, high quality, no surface blemish type, type steel that that would b for very critical applications.

Mayb for the outside of a of a car.

So the argument is primarily that of the, of the skeptics are on technical grounds.

Yeah.

I think that yeah, basicall they're what do you say to them.

Well I don't obviously where you but you work there.

You're getting involved in something.

It's is untested.

No, no, it's not technology.

It's just sort of the way it's being put.

The put together is the way Tippins sells it.

So what do you say?

Our comment it is totally proven technology.

Worst case scenario is that we would have an operation that would have to compete with a mini mill head on at their quality level.

We're taking it to another quality level, that utilizes, we could also have a different type of steelmaking in ours.

So we're bringing a lo of flexibility and opportunity.

On the plus side, worst cas scenario, if everything proved not to be what we want, we'r at least as good as every other.

Minimal.

So you're saying in a sense on that, you're saying we've got to take this to a higher quality level, the same caused or absolutely same cost or reduced cost as, probably, we'll say at the same cost because, the cost going in will cost you a little bit mor to make the higher grade steel.

But certainly on surface quality, as you mentioned, that's where the mini mills have come up to a level and then leveled off.

We got about a minute here.

One of the last thing it occurs to me is everybody, you know, this is a boom and bust kind of bet.

It's right now it's booming as a resul going to fall under this thing.

And about to be pulled out from under in 4 or 5 years.

I mean, why is it why is it suddenly boom town?

Well, first of all, steel industry has had about five good years going.

Pittsburgh hasn't realized i because of the niche we're in.

But the steel industry as a whole has been strong.

It's gone.

It's supposed to continue to be strong.

But we've put this together.

The founders and the team, based o what happens in the down market.

That's what we did with phase one.

Worl class processing was founded on what do you do on the down market?

And that's the way this is being done.

What do you do in the down market?

Everybody makes money in the up market.

So if you're looking for you're going to be able to operat and make money in a down market.

Absolutely.

Without a doubt.

Well good luck.

Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

And thank you.

Sure.

You.

The Carnegie Mellon University robot called Dante has been rescued from a crater in Alaska.

What does it mean for robots in our future?

Scott Boehmke and Henning Pangels of the CMU Robotics Institute are the guests of edit John Craig and science editor Byron Spice.

We're talking about technolog again in this segment, and this.

Now we're talking about something that's just attracted wide attention.

That's Dante.

What what, Tell us about that.

Yeah.

Well, Dante is an eight legged mobile robot.

As opposed to, I think we've come quite accustomed to robots, assembling cars and doing this sort of thing.

But those are robots.

They're stationary.

They sit in a plant.

They're.

They're in an environment that everything's controlled.

That Carnegie Mellon has bee working for some time on field.

Robotics, mobile robots, they're able to, negotiate highways, fields, and in this case, walk over boulders, around boulders, across crevices.

Dante was designed to, explore a, volcano an active volcano about 80 miles west of Anchorage, Alaska, called Mount Spurr.

Late last month, Dante was helicoptered to the the rim of Mount Spurr.

There it was, assembled.

Well, it was assembled, but they, anchored a tether at the rim.

They set up some, telecommunications equipment, generator and then basically left it.

And from that point on, the robot, walked either on its own or under the control, the control of, the staff about 80 miles away and and a trailer in Anchorage, walked down about 700ft into the volcano, walked around inside, sampled gases, then, started walkin back up on the way back up, it, ran into some trouble, flipped on its side and, it was only about a week ago that, they were able to retrieve the robot by going down, putting a sling around it and, helicopter.

So we have two of the people who worked on Dante.

Scott, Were you there?

I was there for the entire mission.

And what did you.

What do we learn about this?

What do you think?

It's, it's a lot of experience in building robots that are designed to withstand that kind of an environment.

Volcano is extremely harsh environment.

There's acids.

There's, very fine ash.

There's lots of water and steam.

And, designing a system to ru in that kind of an environment is a significant challenge.

And it prepares a lot of us to, go on to further missions, possibly even in space.

Did it work?

Absolutely.

We achieved our mission goals.

We got down there, we got the science that we were looking for.

Robot basically was untouched the entire time.

One small trip to the rim to fix, something that was on the rim of the volcano, and the robot went down and back up, mostly back on flawlessly.

Now we're back.

That it didn't get all the way up to the top.

Obviously, that's attracted a lot of attention.

But I mean, do you see that as a a major issue or is that, in a sense I'd say, it's it's not that big of a deal because, we learned what we came to learn.

It would have been nice to have a robot intact afterwards, but the end result of our work is not so much the piece of hardware, but, what we've learned from the experiment.

And after all, you know, this is research.

And, what we did was an experiment.

So the things that you learn not was one that you could design a machine which could withstand rather severe climatic and other issues.

Is that right?

Right.

Even the terrain we were on was very unstable.

It's difficult to navigate around the boulders and through the crevices.

And, there's also a significan challenge in teaching the robot how to actually, wor in those conditions on its own.

And I think there were a lot of significant software advances in tha in that area.

That is software.

That's your that' your department primarily.

Yes.

And what's different about this robot?

Well, for us, it was the first time we really developed a capability to to operate a machine, over that, kind of a, telecommunications link.

We had a satellite link with about a half a second delay in the data transmission, which created, a bit of a challenge.

And we certainly learned a lot about, what it takes to, to deal with that and, how to effectively, maneuver through terrain that you've never seen except through the eyes of the robot as it goes through it.

So that's, for us, that was some something new.

And, and I think also a significant, a part of what, with the NASA, research thrust is after.

So what, where do you go from here?

What sort of things does this make possible that, you might have not have thought of before?

Well, we got, a lot of good ideas about, additional, ways to perceive the terrain for an operator.

Certainly.

We got, got an idea of what it takes to how much concentration it takes to to walk the machine through very rugged terrain.

And, we would we got ideas on how to develop software to do a lot of that work for us.

More computer assisted teleoperation, if you will.

You know, Scott you said you can get the machine mechanically.

Machine, you can do this software.

Who's running this machine?

Somebody looking at a screen or is that or is or is the machine actually running itself?

That's one of the parts.

It's a little hard to for me to determine how much this machine, how intelligent is this machine?

Well, as is often the the answer is it depends on, ultimately, it's a, it's a person sitting there at a computer screen with a couple of video monitors, getting the picture back from the robot and on the, computer screen, a graphical interface, with the mouse and keyboard, where you, have a display of what, the robot senses, and you can tell the robot what to do.

Now, what do you tell the robot to do?

Depends on what you, decide to let the robot do, if you will.

I have a, what I was thinking about.

Let's suppose now we're going back in and the eagle has Dante has landed rather than the eagle.

So nobody hops out of Dante.

Dantes now on the moon.

And somebody, it takes us a golf clu and hits a golf ball and plants an American flag and all the rest of these things, I mean, but really, he is doing this becaus somebody's looking at a screen telling to do this thing, or is he preprogramed to react to certain things?

So how much of this is anticipated or how much is improvisation given certain variables and how much of it?

Actually this has to be somebody seeing there, like operating other piece of machinery.

Well, the further away from Earth you get, the more the robot will have to do on its own.

Because you, I spoke about half a second delay.

So somewhere, such as on Mars, you'd get ten minutes, and every image you see, 10 minutes to 10 minutes old.

And, it'd be very difficult to tell the robo every, specific thing to do.

So, I think, you mentioning, the robot landing, first it would probably just, report back to the Earth control station.

Okay, I'm here, I'm ready.

I'm checked out.

Now tell me what to do.

And then the operators from Earth would, tell it maybe something like, go explore that valley over there or, make a round trip of, ten miles and come back and sample, terrain or gases or whatever is of interest at, on that side.

The idea is you're not telling, Dante.

Okay, move your, left foot here and your right foot there.

You're telling g from this point to that point, you figure out how to walk there.

You walk around these obstacles that you come to for the most part.

I mean, there may be some points where you say, give them some advice, but for the most part, you want to just be able to tell them to do a tas as opposed to, okay, move this, this arm or that.

That's right.

And we found tha we had to do a lot more of that, during this mission than is really feasible, in the long term for, for bigger missions.

I'm leaving the software for a minute.

And that aspect of it now, or the things that you're doing with these machines that are mechanically unique.

Well, we've made a variation of a frame walker in which, we're walkin on the four legs at a time and, working to design these machines to withstand these environments.

It is a bit of a challenge.

There aren't very many of them out there that would that would survive that kind of a, environment.

We're talking mainly heat.

Actually, heat wasn't really as big an issue as you might think on Mount Spurr.

The average temperature up there during the day in the sun was about 65.

You'll see in any of the video.

We were worried about cold?

actually, and dus and rain and ice were actually the more, prevalent problems.

Even the mud, people walking around on the rim could slip and slide around in the mud.

Pretty easily.

The snow was there.

You were always breaking through the ice.

It was a very tough place to be.

The cold was actually more of a concern.

And particularl in, in looking forward to, mount Airbus again where it's typically 40 below, you have to keep yourself warm and that's, an actually an analog t what would happen on the planet.

Do you anticipate going to Mount Arabist or to another volcano in the hopes there?

What what's the nature of the of the robot universe?

I mean, who else is doing this sort of work that we're talking about?

I think, well, there's MIT, there's JPL, there's a lot of the NASA facilities.

There's, outside this country or other people.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And you and what?

And as everybody cooperate with everybody else.

So there's I mean, there's are the proprietary matters involved here.

We've been pretty open with our technologies, I think, in the, academic research circles, it's it's pretty, pretty open.

We have a lot of contact with the Japanese researchers and European researchers.

When you talk to, companies, they're going to be a little more, secretive about, what they've developed.

But, but nobody has.

It's not like anybody has figured out the perfect way of doing all of these things.

Or there's obviously some, a lot of debate as to what's the right size, how many legs, wheels that sort of short.

And that's still going on.

Yeah.

And you guys, so you got you figured this is going to now as a result of this, you got a heck of a lot of attention.

Do you do you see that this is this is taking on a new energy as a result of this?

I think, we certainly, demonstrated that, the the walking robot has, it has an application has potential.

I think a wheeled machine in that environment, would have been just, the loser just.

Okay, well, it wouldn't hav worked.

Well, congratulations.

Thank you very much, both of you.

Thank you.

Columnist Tom Hritz has the last word on political prisoners.

Who said we don't have political prisoners in the United States.

Of course we do.

A prominent political prisone prominent in this area, anyway, just died last week.

His name was Tony Grosso.

Grosso died at the age of 80, and Monsour Medical Center of Cancer and a host of other medical problems before being moved there.

He'd been held at the State Correctional Institution at Greensburg, where he was serving up to 34 years in federal and state prison for offenses related to nearly a lifetime of illegal bookmaking operations.

So how does that make him a political prisoner?

Let me tell you how the crimes committed by Grosso years ago or what you might call old fashioned crimes, he was never accuse of murdering or harming anybody.

He was never accused of fostering prostitution or selling drugs.

Had he been convicted of things like that, he probably would have been released long ago.

Just like today's murderers panthers and drug dealers are.

Nope.

Tony just ran a numbers operation, one that was ten times more efficient.

Lucrative than the one run by the political bureaucrats in Pennsylvania and a host of other states today.

But for some reason, the judges and lawyers who put them away in 1986 held them up to be a sort of public enemy number one.

He was a celebrity.

Tony Grosso, the numbers baron.

They could have saved the state a lot of mone by letting Tony go home to die.

But they wouldn't do that.

None of them wanted to b labeled as the person who showed Tony Grosso mercy.

It would not have been politically expedient.

So they left them to rot away with cancer in prison.

Not for what he did, but for what he was.

Well, Amen.

Then it's just proo that our criminal justice system and the double standards which often influence it, stinks.

Tom, we want t thank you for that endorsement of the criminal justice system.

We thank you for being with us tonight.

Send your comments to the editors.

In care of WQED, 4802 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213.