Welcome to Cool Robots at Dartmouth
Our task, since the fall of 2003, has been the development of a
mobile scientific platform for the harsh conditions of the
Antarctic plateau. This research project has combined the
efforts of undergraduates, international students, graduate
research students, the Thayer School Faculty, as well as
collaborated with the Army's Cold Regions Research and
Engineering Laboratories (CRREL), here in Hanover, N.H.
The immediate goal of our research is the deployment of a
working prototype to the Antarctic. The finished product
is designed to navigate over 1000 km autonomously, using
the abundant solar energy of the Antarctic summer to power
its way over the plateau from the South Pole, where even summer
temperatures hover between -40 and -20 C.
The long term goal is the development of a scalable, low-cost
(<$20,000), semi-autonomous science platform for the creation
of distributed sensor networks across the Antarctic.
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7/20/2005
...Success! That is simply the best word to describe our several weeks of field testing at Summit Camp in Greenland this past summer. An archive of the daily field reports is here. Additional pictures from the trip are here. In brief, the robot met and in some cases exceeded our expectations. By the end of the trip, the robot was able to autonomously execute an 8-mile GPS course laid out for it, through soft snow, gathering all necessary power from its solar panels. Our thanks go out to everyone who helped make this possible. Special thanks to Veco Polar and the staff at Summit Camp who made the trip go so smoothly.
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[Old News]
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