Researchers in academia have successfully demonstrated acoustic landmine detection techniques. These typically employ acoustic or seismic sources to induce vibration in the mine/soil system, and use vibration sensors such as laser vibrometers or geophones to measure the resultant surface motion. These techniques exploit the unique mechanical properties of landmines to discriminate the vibration response of a buried mine from an off-target measurement. The Army requires the ability to rapidly and reliably scan an area for landmines and is developing a mobile platform at NVESD to meet this requirement. The platform represents an initial step toward the implementation of acoustic mine detection technology on a representative field vehicle. The effort relies heavily on the acoustic mine detection cart system developed by researchers at the University of Mississippi and Planning Systems, Inc. The NVESD platform consists of a John Deere E-gator configured with a robotic control system to accurately position the vehicle. In its present design, the E-gator has been outfitted with an array of laser vibrometers and a bank of loudspeakers. Care has been taken to ensure that the vehicle's mounting hardware and data acquisition algorithms are sufficiently robust to accommodate the implementation of other sensor modalities. A thorough discussion of the mobile platform from its inception to its present configuration will be provided. Specific topics to be addressed include the vehicle's control and data acquisition systems. Preliminary results from acoustic mine detection experiments will also be presented.
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