Researcher Project of the Week

As a culminating senior design project, four mechanical engineering students, Edoardo Biancheri, Dan Hake, Dat Truong and Landon Unninayer built a remote-controlled robot to detect landmines in rugged terrain.

This project was aimed at helping humanitarian groups and the military prevent landmine-related accidents of which there are approximately 24,000 annually, according to United Nations statistics.

Carl Nelson, a principal staff physicist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics lab, sponsored this group, giving his time, expertise and $10,000 to help finance the endeavor. He also gave the group 10 requirements for the robot for which they had nine months to design, build and test their deliverable prototype.

Some of these requirements, such as producing the robots for less than $1,000 and being able to drop the robots from heights upwards of 30 cm, proved most challenging for the team.

In the end, the group decided to make a two-piece vehicle that ran on a set of treads.

The first piece contained the brains of the operation, such as the gearbox and drive train. The second housed a paint container, which sprayed a marking on the ground above where the landmine was detected. This sprayer could make up to 40 marks before it would need refilling. Additionally, a video camera was mounted atop the drive system on the first piece, enabling the operators to see where the robot was traveling without being out in the field with the robot.

Hailed a success by their sponsor and their academic professor, Dr. Andrew Conn, the group received international recognition in many newspapers and magazines as a result of this work.

However, perfectionist Biancheri confesses that if the group were to have time past their May 2004 deadline, they would have wanted to improve the grips on the tank-like wheel treads which tended to slip after extensive usage.

He also emphasized that the group had excellent dynamics both working academically and socially, which helped them overall. He estimates that the project took at least eight to 10 hours a week, and many more as the delivery deadline approached.

Taking classes in manufacturing engineering and computer automated design (CAD) proved especially useful to the group. They spent many hours creating detailed CAD drawings, which they would send to machine shops to fabricate. They also gained extensive knowledge about rapid prototyping machines through the manufacturing class, which they used to fabricate many of their plastic parts. Using the plastic parts was one of the ways the group managed to reduce costs.

Though their interaction with other Hopkins divisions and starting their project early helped, the team was able to create this exceptional project and pass the final required classes in the mechanical engineering program to graduate.