With numerous slated military base closures identified by recent Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) determinations, residual hazard issues, especially that of unexploded ordnance (UXO), will be of increasing importance. Although the need to remove human operators from such hazardous environments is of vital importance, an equally critical need is to significantly increase the productivity of associated wide-area search, close-in detection, and removal operations. The recent INL-led autonomous robotic countermine experiment demonstrated an order of magnitude improvement in productivity via significantly reducing route survey and land-mine detection cycle times. A key question that must be determined is whether such demonstrated productivity improvements are transferable to the environmental sector as well. Additionally, the ability to potentially create and field differing unmanned vehicles that can capture, process, and fuse diverse data inputs from magnetic gradiometers, induction sensors, ground penetrating radar (GPR), high resolution optical imagery, thermal cameras, and hyperspectral imagery may represent a unique market niche, greatly enhancing KBN1: Surveying and Detection.
- Contacts:
- Derek Wadsworth, (208) 526-8514, Send E-mail