Determining if a segment of property is suitable for use as an aircraft is a vitally important task that is currently performed by humans. However, this task can also put our people in harms way from land mines, sniper and artillery attacks. The objective of this research is to build a soil survey manipulator that can be carried by a lightweight, portable, autonomous vehicle, sensors and controls to navigate in assault zone. The manipulators permit both surface and sub surface measurements. An original soil sampling tube was constructed with linear actuator as manipulator and standard penetrometer as sampling sensor. The controls provide local control of the robot as well as the soil sampling mechanism. GPS has been selected to perform robot global navigation. The robot was constructed and tested on the test field. The results verified the concepts of using soil sampling robot to survey runway is feasible.

Date Published: 30 September 2003
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 5267, Intelligent Robots and Computer Vision XXI: Algorithms, Techniques, and Active Vision, (30 September 2003); doi: 10.1117/12.516367

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 5267:
Intelligent Robots and Computer Vision XXI: Algorithms, Techniques, and Active Vision
David P. Casasent; Ernest L. Hall; Juha Roning, Editor(s)