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WSU Joins with NASA JPL, USGS CVO in High-Tech Monitoring of Mount St. Helens
by Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif, August 07, 2009.
Scientists have placed high-tech "spiders" inside and around the mouth of Mount St. Helens, one of the most active volcanoes in the United States. Networks such as these could one day be used to respond rapidly to an impending eruption.
On July 14, 2009, these spider pods were lowered by cable from a helicopter hovering about 100 feet up (30 meters) and gently put in hot spots inside and around the volcano crater.
"This project demonstrates that a low-cost sensor network system can support real-time monitoring in extremely challenging environments," said WenZhan Song of Washington State University Vancouver. Song is the principal investigator for this NASA-funded technology research project, which also draws on participation from the U.S. Geological Survey and from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Click this link for the news
Monitoring Mount St. Helens ‘Spiders’ spin web around volcano
by Erik Robinson Columbian Staff Writer, Thursday,July 16, 2009.On Tuesday morning, a bevy of scientists clustered around a set of 14 peculiar silver boxes in a gravel parking lot near Mount St. Helens.
Anticipation was high as the group waited for the sun to burn through a blanket of low-hanging clouds. A helicopter waited nearby to hoist the packages into the volcano’s steaming crater and around the mountain flanks, putting the sensors into position to measure every volcanic hiccup.
Once in place, the probes would form their own communication network.
“No one in the world has ever done this before,” said WenZhan Song, a computer scientist from Washington State University Vancouver. Click this link for the news
Smart spiders spy on Mount Saint Helens
by Lynne Peeples in 60-Second Science Blog , July 15, 2009
A dozen stainless steel spiders descended from a helicopter into the crater of Mount Saint Helens yesterday. As Seattle’s KOMO News reported, the “pods are small and tough enough to reach places no man dares” to go. Scientists hope that data collected by the monitoring machines could one day help them to better predict volcanic eruptions. Click this link for the news
High-tech eyes keep watch on Mount St. Helens
by Casey Norton , KOMONEWS.COM, July 14, 2009. Watch the story
MOUNT ST. HELENS, Wash. -- Researchers have come up with a way to keep a close eye on Mount St. Helens without stepping foot on the crater.
Geologists call them "spiders" -- pods that are small and tough enough to reach places no man dares, like the vent on the volcano.
"Nobody really wants to go in there and dig in a new instrument. It's too much risk," said Rick LaHusen with the U.S. Geological Survey. Each stainless steel box is a self-contained volcano laboratory that sends instant data for immediate analysis.
GPS units detect movements down to the centimeter. Lead plates pick up even tiny foot taps. And pressure gauges sense small explosions.
On Tuesday a dozen spiders were hooked to a helicopter and put in place on North America's most active volcano.
The flight into the crater was the culmination of a 2-year, $2 million partnership between the U.S. geological survey, Washington State University and NASA. The space agency isn't so much interested in the volcanoes as the spiders, including how they communicate with each other and satellites in space.
"They share a network. They automatically find a network and a route out somewhere to the observatory," LaHusen said.
By talking to each other, the spiders also determine which information is most important and which spider has priority.
"You don't have to go and reconfigure each one. You don't have to hike up the volcano and do this, or fly up the volcano and start tinkering with it," said Sharon Kader of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
After blanketing Mount St. Helens, the next step is putting a series of $3,000 spiders on other volcanoes. With some fine-tuning, geologists say spiders could become the cheapest, safest way to predict an eruption. Click this link for the news
Mesh Network Monitors Volcanoes
Sensors dropped onto Mount St. Helens relayed data after forming an ad-hoc network.
by Kristina Grifantini, MIT Technology Review Magazine, Monday, June 22, 2009
Today kicks off the three-day MobiSys 2009 conference in Krakow, Poland--a showcase of emerging mobile and wireless technology. And one paper that caught my eye comes from Washington State University and the U.S. Geological Survey. WSU Researchers will present a paper that shows how an air-dropped mesh sensor network can monitor volcanoes in real time.
Traditionally, scientists have had to use data loggers and permanent installations to send volcanic data back to observatories. But the WSU researchers dropped five mobile stations via helicopter, each 2 kilometers apart, on treacherous terrain on Mount St. Helens in Washington State. Despite rain, snow and over 120 mph winds, the stations formed a mesh network to successfully relay real-time data for a month and a half. Each mobile station is a three-legged structure, about a meter tall 3 kilograms. Inside is a battery-powered iMote2 platform, a GPS receiver, and sensors. The team used an accelerometer to detect seismic activity, an infrasonic sensor to capture low-frequency acoustic waves resulting from eruptions, and a lightning sensor that can detect strikes up to 10 kilometers away. Each node automatically increases the number of samples it takes once it detects an event. But a user can configure and control the sensors via the Web.
Lead researcher and assistant professor at WSU Wen-Zhan Song says that the rapidly deployable system, "has particular value during periods of volcanic unrest but is also useful for longer term monitoring." Click this link for the news
"Spider" technology guards Mount St. Helens volcano
by BARBARA LABOE, The (Longview) Daily News, May 19, 2009, 06:34 AM
Humans are not the only ones pondering Mount St. Helens these days. A new "smart" monitoring machine can not only record second-by-second data on the slumbering volcano, it can also analyze the information and decide what to send to scientists first. During an eruption, the monitors also will give scientists more and better information from areas previously too dangerous to install equipment.
So if the volcano rumbled back to life 29 years after the devastating May 18, 1980, eruption, scientists could deploy the monitors and quickly gather all kinds of information about the event and the possible danger.
The machines, called spiders because of their stabilizing legs, are sturdier and record more information than previous machines. But the real claim to fame is that the monitors' computer-programmed "brains" can decide what some data means and which information is most important, said Rick LaHusen, an instrumentation engineer with the U.S. Geological Survey. Click this link for the news
Scientists continue to learn from Mount St. Helens
by Michael Milstein, The Oregonian Thursday January 29, 2009, 8:31 PM
A year after Mount St. Helens ended its most recent eruption, returning to sleep for who knows how long, scientists continue learning from the volcano on the horizon. They're piecing together clues pointing to the subterranean forces that brought the volcano back to life in 2004, when it began building a gigantic new lava dome in its crater, stopping early last year.
Researchers are realizing that future eruptions also might begin with little warning. Slightly more than a week separated the first seismic signals that the mountain was reawakening and the first blasts from its crater -- far less warning than the mountain gave before the deadly 1980 eruption that made it famous. Click this link for the news
Air-dropped deployment of a 5-station sensor network to Mout St. Helens
Sat, 10/16/2008 Renjie Huang
On Oct 15th 2008, we successfully air-dropped 5 stations into the rugged crater of Volcano St. Helens, which only took one hour with a helicopter. The stations communicate with each other through an amplified 802.15.4 radio and form a self-forming and self-healing multi-hop wireless network.The distance between stations are up to 2 km. Each sensor station collects and delivers real-time continuous seismic, infrasonic, lightning, GPS raw data and their derived data (such as RSAM) to a gateway.
Smart robotic sensors monitor activity at Mount St. Helens
Sunday, October 26th 2008 | 8:40 p.m. BY ISOLDE RAFTERY COLUMBIAN STAFF WRITER
Research grant from Boeing on ER-CDS algorithm evaluation
Sat, 08/10/2008 Renjie Huang
We receive a Research Grant ($20,000 over 6 months) from Boeing Company to study localized topology control algorithms to support efficient Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) link state routing in multi-hop wireless networks.
NASA helps fund St. Helens volcano research
06:10 PM PST on Monday, January 29, 2007. By Vince Patton, special to kgw.com
Space exploration and volcano research may share technology in coming years if Pacific Northwest scientists develop reliable remote sensors which can communicate with each other and with satellites without human input.
