Professorial Challenge Yields a Robot
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edited by Robert H. Williams
Physicist Carl V. Nelson, of the applied physics laboratory at The Johns Hopkins
University, had a problem: he had developed several sensors to detect land mines,
but he needed a vehicle to both transport the seekers through rough terrain
and a mechanism to mark the mines.
Four undergraduate engineering students responded to his challenge. They conceived
a remote-controlled robot that is armed with a color camera and a paint marker.
“I asked the students to develop a vehicle that could get off the road,
off the clear paths, and go into rougher terrain such as bushes and high grass,
where mine detection would be difficult to do by hand,” Nelson said.
The largely non-metal, tracked robot is guided by a battery powered controller
with joystick and video display. It was designed and built by the students for
about $5,000. They believe the mine trackers could be mass-produced for less
than $1,000 a unit.
Nelson, meanwhile, said he will show the prototype to the Army.
The four undergraduate engineers are Edoardo Bianchei, Dan Hake, Dat Truong
and Lanon Unninayar.