Robotic Surveying
ZAPATA ENGINEERING challenged our engineers and scientists, which included robotics expertise from Carnegie Mellon University, to design a solution to meet our client's requirements for rapid digital geophysical and radiological data collection of a munitions test range with no down-range personnel. A prime concern of the project was to minimize exposure of personnel to unexploded ordnance and radiation. The field season was limited by extreme heat, cold and snow. Geographical Information System (GIS) tools were used throughout this project to accurately define the limits of mapped areas, build a common mapping platform from various client products, track production progress, allocate resources and relate subsurface geophysical information to geographical features for use in rapidly reacquiring targets for investigation. We were hopeful that our platform could meet the proposed 35 acres per day, towing both a geophysical package and a radiological monitoring trailer. We held our breath and crossed our fingers as the autonomous Speedrower began to crawl across the playa lakebed. We met our proposed production rate, and we averaged just less than 50 acres per 12-hour day using the autonomous platform with a path tracking error of less than +/- 4 inches. Our project team mapped over 1,800 acres in an 8-week (4 days per week) timeframe. The expertise of our partner, Carnegie Mellon University, was recently demonstrated when their two autonomous vehicle entries finished second and third at the 2005 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge. 'The Grand Challenge program was established to help foster the development of autonomous vehicle technology that will some day help save the lives of Americans who are protecting our country on the battlefield', said DARPA Grand Challenge Program Manager, Ron Kurjanowicz. Our autonomous remote-controlled vehicle (ARCV) was a modified New Holland 2550 Speedrower retrofitted to allow the machine-actuated functions to be controlled by an onboard computer. The computer-controlled Speedrower was developed at Carnegie Mellon University to automate agricultural harvesting. Harvesting tasks require the vehicle to cover a field using minimally overlapping rows at slow speeds in a similar manner to geophysical data acquisition. The Speedrower had demonstrated its ability to perform as it had already logged hundreds of acres of autonomous harvesting. This project is the first use of autonomous robotic technology on a large-scale for geophysical surveying.
- Research Organization:
- National Security Technologies, LLC (NSTec), Mercury, NV (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE - National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC52-06NA25946
- OSTI ID:
- 934788
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/NV/25946-099; TRN: US200815%%112
- Journal Information:
- Military Engineer, Vol. 99, Issue 646
- Publisher:
- Society of American Military Engineers
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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