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Detection of Underground Installations in Hostile    Environments

Supported by ARO

Sasha Apartsin

Recent hostile activities have demonstrated the importance of creating reliable and accurate information about underground activity and underground installations of any sort. Our research is focused on biologicaly inspired methods for mapping sub-terrain installation using infrasound acoustic imaging (“acoustic eye”). 

Detecting and imaging of underground installments (e.g. tunnels, bunkers) in a hostile environment poses unique challenges on deployment and remote sensing methods a detection system may employ. A system should remain undetected by the enemy and, therefore, should not use methods requiring high-energy signals. A system deployment should be fast and hassles to stay unnoticed. Sensing and imaging algorithms should be robust enough to handle heterogeneous sub-terrain properties and provide reasonable resolution of areas of interest.

          Echolocation, also called Biosonar, is the biological sonar used by several mammals such as bats (although not all species), dolphins and whales (though not baleen whales).Echolocating animals emit calls out to the environment, and listen to the echoes of those calls that return from various objects in the environment. They use these echoes to locate, range, and identify the objects. Another animal that uses sonar-like exploration of the underground is the mole rat.  This rat, which lives underground and has no functioning eyes, generates ground stimulation by banging its head on the wall of its tunnels. It has been shown, that this is a sufficient stimulation for generating a full 3D view for some tens of meters neighborhood.

This research focuses on computational and modeling methods associated with underground installment detection system. We explore methods for sub-terrain imaging using fusion of low-energy infrasound signal responses. Our work is inspired by recent discovery of remote sensing capabilities of Blind Mole Rat, which is able to detect and avoid object buried underground.

Figure 1: Simulation of underground acoustic wave propagation and reflection in 2D. The acoustic wave from point source is reflected from rectangular cavity. Images in the top row show reflections from upper boundary while the bottom row images shows reflection from lower boundary of the cavity.