Demonstration Report: Handheld UXO Discriminator, SERDP No. MR-1667
In 2003, the Defense Science Board observed: 'The problem is that instruments that can detect the buried UXOs also detect numerous scrap metal objects and other artifacts, which leads to an enormous amount of expensive digging. Typically 100 holes may be dug before a real UXO is unearthed! The Task Force assessment is that much of this wasteful digging can be eliminated by the use of more advanced technology instruments that exploit modern digital processing and advanced multi-mode sensors to achieve an improved level of discrimination of scrap from UXOs.' In keeping with these remarks and with prior funding (UX-1225, MM-0437, and MM-0838), the LBNL group has successfully designed and built the cart-mounted Berkeley UXO Discriminator (BUD) and demonstrated its performance at various test sites (cf. Gasperikova et al., 2007, 2008, and 2009). Because hand-held systems have the advantage of being lightweight, compact, portable, and deployable under most site conditions, they are particularly useful in areas of dense vegetation or challenging terrain. In heavily wooded areas or areas with steep or uneven terrain, hand-held sensors may be the only suitable device for UXO detection and discrimination because it can be carried through spaces that the operator could walk through or at least approach. Furthermore, it is desirable to find and characterize a metallic object without the need to accurately locate the sensors at multiple positions around the target. The ideal system would thus locate and characterize the target from a single position of the sensor and indicate to the operator where to flag the target for subsequent study. Based on these considerations, we designed and built a sensor package in a shape of a 14-in (0.35 m) cube. This hand-held prototype incorporates the key features of the cart-mounted system - (a) three orthogonal transmitters and ten pairs of receivers, and (b) difference or gradient measurements that significantly reduce the ambient and motion noise, and greatly enhance the sensitivity to the gradients of the target. The system characterizes the target from a single position. Results from a local test site were in a good agreement with theoretical performance calculations of such a device. This survey was designed to demonstrate performance of the system under realistic survey conditions at the Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) in Aberdeen, MD. The survey was preformed in an area with known items ('Calibration Grid'), and in a seeded blind test area (the 'Blind Test Grid'). The ground truth for the surveys conducted on the Blind Test Grid was withheld from the testers. Only the graded test scores based on target detection and target classification were provided. For more information, see http://aec.army.mil/usaec/technology/uxo01c03.html.
- Research Organization:
- Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA (US)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- Earth Sciences Division
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-05CH11231
- OSTI ID:
- 1006398
- Report Number(s):
- LBNL-4260E
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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