Robotic Mine Exploration

Punty writes "CMU has yet again pushed the envelope of robotic technology. After the Quecreek mine incident, technology experts made a quick move to come up with solutions to mine mapping. Well, CMU has made major progress thanks to Red Wittaker, who created the Mobile Robotics Development Course with such goals in mind. It is especially interesting to see that it is the students doing most of the work in such a complex project. The full story, along with links to the "Groundhog" and "Nomad" projects can be found here. . ."

I thought we were working to rid the world

[Anonymous Coward]

of mines?

Re:I thought we were working to rid the world

[pyr0]

I don't know who modded that as funny, but I don't think it's very funny at all. The mining industry is being strangled to death in the US especially. It's a shame that the jobs and money are going elsewhere, especially when I'm very interested in economic geology and not interested in leaving the country.

Woah. Bad analogy:

[twiztidlojik]

"When are you really going to be ready?" he adds, encouragingly. "You know, when they launch the shuttle, it's never ready. It always has dozens of flaws they know about. They launch anyway."

WTF!?

Dude, get a better comparison :X

That being said, this will be really neat if the robots become cheap. Imagine what could be done in the world of urban exploration with this kind of technology!

Application?

[Dachannien]

It would be interesting to see whether mine exploration robots would be able to investigate the progress of mine fires. [grayco.com]

Especially interesting?

[Thing 1]

It is especially interesting to see that it is the students doing most of the work in such a complex project.

Really? From my experience it's almost always the students doing most of the work.

The faculty is there to guide them, come up with the ideas, etc. -- but they use cheap student labor to get the job done.

Cool

[Rxke]

... But I initially confused The title for saying actually exploiting mines... Would be cool to have something like that, too... a lot less people would have to risk their lives, that way. Also, imagine robot miners on the moon, on mars... Let them loose for a couple of months, years,... and hey presto: ready to use subsurface tunnels for manned missions, with a bounty of ore, ready to process, to boot.

Now we only need the Gyro-FX

[Nicolay77]

and some robotic virus...

To have a full real Descent experience!!

Hmm...

[GreyOrange]

Space mining seems like something we need more funding for, if this is the first step then that is great.