Tuesday 14 January 2014

Glacier Lake Robotic Rover

Hey... guyz... following are some pictures cum description of the Glacier Lake Robotic Robot built by me for my M.Tech project {see main project for details}.

Angle view of fabricated glacial lake rover
The first programmable robot in the form of a robotic arm was invented by George Devol and Joe Englebergerin year 1954. Since then Robots have been used widely in various fields. Today we see mega sized and miniature robots performing well in military, industries, medical science, space science, etc. The importance of robots not only lies in the fact that they are capable of performing unimaginable tasks assigned to them but also able to work in situations where the human body has high risk or unable to survive.




Back view of fabricated glacial lake rover


Around 1980 robots were used to do environmental monitoring. These were found very useful in areas where human self supervision is very hazardous. As already known about the remote and notorious nature of glaciers lakes use of a robotic vehicle equipped with GPS, SONAR, temperature sensors, light sensors and onboard camera stood out as the only possible alternative to monitor the notorious remote glacial lakes.
Commercially available state-of-the-art robotic sonar vehicles were again very expensive, heavy and there specifications in most cases does not fully covered the requirements of the project. Together with requirement and funding margin imposed by the project budget a new Floating Glacial Lake Rover is proposed in this project. Hence, the quest started to develop a low cost solution to address the problem. 

Inside view of fabricated glacial lake rover




Fabricated remote control section of the glacial lake rover




Main Project Title: Glacier Lake outburst Flood Study(GLOF) study of Sikkim Himalaya



Introduction video on slide 2
Introduction video on slide 2
Study area video on slide 5


Rover video on slide 30