Bowling Green, Ky. - Microgravity techniques used by Western Kentucky University’s Center for Cave and Karst Studies and a Void Detection Robot designed by WKU electrical engineering students will be demonstrated later this week for the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.

WKU received a $225,000 grant from the Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation to build a robotic method to measure microgravity. For the past 2½ years, Dr. Stacy Wilson and electrical engineering students, including Tommy Rippy, Stephen Miller and Michael Howard, have worked to build the robot.

The robot, an all-terrain vehicle operated via a laptop computer, carries a microgravity meter to locate underground voids, sinkholes, caves or, in the case of the U.S.-Mexico border, clandestine tunnels.

“I want to emphasize that we’re not looking for illegal immigrants,” said Dr. Nick Crawford, director of WKU’s Center for Cave and Karst Studies. “This project is to find tunnels used for smuggling drugs or other illegal activities.”

Several WKU students and faculty members are traveling to Calexico, Calif., to demonstrate the robot and microgravity techniques for the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. The border patrol has selected an area where tunnels exist and will evaluate the robot’s effectiveness in locating them, Dr. Crawford said.

“We’re excited about going out there and have high hopes for the techniques we’ve been using in Kentucky,” said Gina Cesin, a geoscience graduate student who has been conducting research on the use of microgravity to locate clandestine tunnels.

“It’s been very successful here in Kentucky and I honestly feel that it will be successful out on the border. I have a feeling that it’s something that can be applied and something the border patrol can continue to work with,” she said.
Since 1985, the Center for Cave and Karst Studies, in WKU’s Department of Geography and Geology, has been using microgravity and resistivity techniques to locate caves. Annie Croft, the Center’s assistant director, routinely works with graduate and undergraduate research assistants to locate subsurface voids that might result in future sinkhole collapses along proposed highways and other locations.

After the Sept. 11 attacks in New York City, the Center was on standby to use microgravity techniques to locate voids where people might be trapped. The World Trade Center site, however, was too dangerous to manually collect the data, Cesin said.

“That’s where the idea for a robot first came up,” she said.
The robot is controlled remotely via a laptop computer, but WKU hopes to convert the robot to autonomous operation.

Dr. Crawford said the U.S. military is interested in WKU’s research to locate clandestine tunnels and is providing a new $75,000 microgravity meter for the robot. The robot also is equipped with a GPS unit to record latitude and longitude information.

The project has given several WKU students hands-on experience in building the robot, programming its operations and collecting and analyzing the data.

“Cutting-edge research by students at WKU on important issues such as this is becoming a hallmark of our undergraduate and graduate programs,” said Dr. David Keeling, head of the Geography and Geology Department. “Exposing students to social, environmental and political issues in a way that challenges their critical thinking and analytical skills adds tremendous value to the WKU educational experience.”

Dr. Crawford recently made a presentation on locating clandestine tunnels at a conference at the University of Mississippi and will give a similar presentation for the American Geophysical Union meeting in Baltimore.

While useful for homeland security and border issues, the robot also is valuable for work in southcentral Kentucky or other regions where the Center is looking for caves or investigating sinkhole collapses, Crawford said.

“This has been a very worthwhile cooperative effort between the faculty and students of the Center for Cave and Karst Studies and the Engineering Department, both of which are centers within the Applied Research Technology Program of Distinction,” Dr. Crawford said. “Hopefully this robot will be an important contribution to homeland security.”

More WKU news is available at www.wku.edu. If you’d like to receive WKU news via e-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.

For information, contact Center for Cave and Karst Studies at (270) 745-3252.

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