"ROBOT: student team's robot safely detects land mines"
Johns Hopkins University engineering students recently completed a remote-controlled robot that can find land mines in rugged terrain and mark their location by spraying paint. "I challenged the students to develop a vehicle that could get into rougher terrain, like bushes and high grass," said Carl Nelson, a principal staff physicist at the university's Applied Physics Laboratory. "I wanted it to be able to get off the roads and clear paths � where mine detection can be difficult to do by hand." Four Johns Hopkins engineering students rose to the challenge and spent almost a year designing a prototype robot. The machine is being evaluated by explosive-detection experts as a model for a low-cost robot for soldiers and humanitarian groups. It was designed by engineering students Edoardo Biancheri, Dan Hake, Dat Truong and Landon Unninayar. The project encompassed a two-semester course called the Engineering Design Project.
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