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{\bf \today}
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	{\large\bf The desert bat proposal}
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    The invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent operation desert-storm
has left the Kuwaiti desert scattered with about a million mines and
thousands of unexploded cluster bombs. Hundreds of civilians have been
maimed by these mines. The governemnt is currently spending about a
billion dollars on defusing these hazards. This task has been taken up
on a war footing, mainly by American experts. The infirm terrain and
extreme temperatures make working with the mines even more hazardous. \\

   Robotic devices to map the mines and help defuse them would 
accelerate the process and will be a step towards making this task
safer for this and such future operations. The Robotics Institute has
a set of well developed technologies in mobile robots, subsurface
perception and manipulation for creating such a device. The proposed
robot would be deployed in 1994 and would able to map twenty acres a
day. \\

  One configuration scenario envisons a teleoperated device with onboard
millimeter Radar, sonar and magneto-dynamic sensors. The mine sites
could be recorded by photographs, markers and on maps using GPS and
ded reckoning. Mobility could be achieved on low pressure tires or on
a legged machine depending on obstacle density in the terrain. A
hand-eye coordinated manipulator can be used to defuse mines by
teleoperation with error and force feedback. The human interaction in
the operation could be graded to meet task complexity and machine
confidence.

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