crave.cnet.com — Researchers at the Lincoln Lab at MIT have come up with something that can be described as a sound flashlight. It emits powerful, but tightly focused acoustic beams that can penetrate underground.When the beams hit a mine, the vibrations from the collision push up dirt around the area. That movement of dirt is then registered by a radar device.
Dec 21, 2006 View in Crawl 4
sockpuppetsDec 22, 2006
"You can determine what types of mines there are--and which countries made them--by their unique signatures."I'd like to adapt this technology to determine which girls I should buy drinks for at a bar.
tagawaDec 22, 2006
My congratulations to the submitter for one of the most relevant and descriptive titles and descriptions on Digg. Oh, and interesting article to boot.
biznarDec 22, 2006
Yeah, and kittens don't weigh enough usually
foxhoundadminDec 22, 2006
and they call this device "olpc." you just throw it on a suspected live land mine! so simple!
rocketryguyDec 22, 2006
For the skeptics: You have no idea how good digital signalling processing has gotten. Once they have a signature established, pattern matching algorithms should have little problem doing exactly what they're talking about. The real question is what are the economics of the system, once the acoustic drivers are boosted up to the point of a safe range, as vibration of any kind obviously merits caution. How many mines can it find, and how quickly? Given that eventually it may be damaged by a large mine (an anti-tank mine makes a damn big boom), how much will it cost to replace/mass manufacture? There are an obscene number of mines (come to think of it, >1 is obscene) out there killing indiscriminately. Mostly children get killed, as they're the ones who wander around and encounter them. And the real charming ones look like toys to encourage them to pick them up. It should stop, and we're holding up an international ban ourselves, supposedly due to the Korean DMZ, and it's need for landmines as a deterrent. We are capable of greatness. Gotta keep reminding myself of that, when I think about crap like this. Go MIT. These guys should be treated like rock stars if the damn thing works well enough to make a difference.
mark101Dec 22, 2006
I posted earlier it was impossible and got buried. It was the story I had problems with, not the actual device that must obviously work. This link has been written properly and says "push up on the ground" not "push up dirt"
gardaDec 22, 2006
This is really great. I've heard that there are still landmines in places like France and Russia from WWII that have been totally forgotten about that will still blow someone's leg off if stepped on tomorrow
zarexDec 22, 2006
I've read the original paper. They're using Audio Spotlight technology to make the directional beams, also an MIT tech. www.audiospotlight.com