Re: [DS] Minefield clearing pondering

G'day Glenn,

 >From a professional angle, I am VERY interested.  Could you give the
 >site?  I am sure 'somebody' in the agency has a subscription.

I'd love to tell you, but my free subscription expired while I was at
lunch 
(blast!!!), so here's the article (sorry for the long post guys)

Cheers

Beth

 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Scorched earth	30 Sep 00
Clearing minefields is terrifying enough, but mines that move around
will 
make it virtually impossible
LANDMINES that hop around to foil the crews that clear minefields are
under 
development in the US. The so-called "self-healing" minefield can detect

when a path is being cleared through it and instruct the remaining mines
to 
plug any gaps.
Ironically, the technology is being developed because the US plans to
sign 
up to the Ottawa Convention, which bans antipersonnel landmines.
Anti-tank minefields are usually protected by small antipersonnel mines.

These are meant to hinder soldiers who try to clear a route through the 
minefield. But antipersonnel mines are banned under the Ottawa 
Convention-already signed by more than 135 countries-which the US will
sign 
up to in 2006. To make future anti-tank minefields tougher to cross
without 
antipersonnel mines, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency 
(DARPA) has committed $13 million to the development of "intelligent" 
minefields.
At Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Rush Robinett
and 
his colleagues are developing robotic anti-tank mines that can plug gaps
in 
a minefield by hopping about. "I was catching grasshoppers to go trout 
fishing when I noticed that they jump around in a random fashion, hit
the 
ground in an arbitrary orientation, then right themselves and jump
again," 
he says. "I said to myself: `I can build a robot that can do that.'"
Hopping has a distinct advantage over more conventional means of getting

about, says Robinett. "Robots with wheels and tracks can't crawl over 
things more than a fraction of the dimension of their body. A hopping
robot 
can clear things that are ten to one hundred times its body dimension."
The 
mines will have a powerful piston-driven foot attached to their base
that 
should propel them more than 10 metres into the air.
The self-righting mines will detect the distance to their neighbours
using 
ultrasonic sensors and communicate with each other by radio. If some of
the 
mines are removed or destroyed to make a path through the minefield, the

remaining mines will sense that they are missing and hop around until
they 
form a regular pattern again. DARPA wants the minefield to reorganise 
itself within 10 seconds.
"The advantage of mines is that they are cheap, simple and effective,"
says 
Tony Howgate of the Battlefield Engineering Wing at Britain's Ministry
of 
Defence. "This isn't going to be cheap or simple, and the more
complicated 
it gets, the more unreliable it'll be," he says. He also wonders what
will 
stop the hopping mines going astray. "How are you going to know where 
they've hopped to?" he asks.
Mark Hiznay of the pressure group Human Rights Watch in Washington DC
says 
that the hopping mines must not be capable of inadvertent, accidental 
detonation by a person-a key tenet of the Ottawa Convention. "If the
system 
meets the definition of the treaty, this could be a good alternative,"
he 
says. "The main concern we have is how sensitive the device's fuses are
to 
the unintentional acts of a person. We're asking governments to clarify 
what physical forces are necessary to set off all types of mines."

The self-healing minefield	
Ian Sample	
 From New Scientist magazine, vol 167 issue 2258, 30/09/2000, page 4	
© Copyright New Scientist, RBI Ltd 2000

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Elizabeth Fulton
c/o CSIRO Division of Marine Research
GPO Box 1538
HOBART
TASMANIA 7001
AUSTRALIA
Phone (03) 6232 5018 International +61 3 6232 5018
Fax 03 6232 5053 International +61 3 6232 5053

email: beth.fulton@marine.csiro.au