2011-12 Photos - Looking down on Old Pole
Above is a hero shot image of Yeti (JL/NSF)...a small articulated robotic device that was used to deploy GPR over the Old Pole site. It weighs about 150 pounds not including the GPR...it was originally developed at Dartmouth University's Thayer School of Engineering, with some CRREL involvement. The robot project began in 2005, and this current evolution was created starting in 2008. Yeti (not an acronym for anything) has been tested and used to survey crevasses on the Greenland Inland Traverse (GRIT) route and the South Pole Traverse (SPoT) route. It was brought to Pole to see if there were still any significant voids in the area of the buried station that needed engineering attention.  Here it's at work in the dark sector above Old Pole (JL); DSL and the SPT are in the background. Yeti can be controlled in a tethered mode, but untethered with a 48 volt battery bank it has a 3-6 hour or 4-1/2 mile range. It is equipped with a radio and GPS link and can follow a waypoint course. More advanced tasks involve "learning" to evaluate and process crevasse images based on previous experience. | |
 Here's another view of the survey looking the other way toward the elevated station and Spoolhenge (with a long lens) (JL). |
 Here Yeti was being tested along the South Pole Traverse route in October 2010. Engineer Eric Trautmann is seen here during this comparison with a manual system mounted on the Pisten Bully (JL). |
 A view of Yeti without GPR, inside one of the arches. |
 And from another angle. |
 And here is Yeti on a test drive in front of cryo. |
What were the findings? Well, despite the blasting operations in 2010-11, Yeti still found a big void down there...probably not the top hats which had been the previous focus of remediation, but the central area between the galley and the sickbay/Taj Mahal, which had structural steel framing erected in 1963-64 (construction photo, one of my 1976-77 photos looking north, and a more recent file photo of the same aisle looking south, the OIC/store building is at left and sickbay is at right). Notice that things had already started to get distorted in 1976. As of June 2012 the planning was still underway on how to deal with it...either another explosive blast, or perhaps more heavy equipment operations from the surface. |
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The first part of this NSF video includes a description as well as views of Yeti in operation. More information about Yeti and the project...most recently, during the 2012-13 season it was used to sense out the unique ice caves near the crater of Mt. Erebus (1 March 2013 Antarctic Sun article and NSF press release). The NSF press release was the source of the top photo on this page. Coverage of the 2011-12 Old Pole survey includes this Antarctic Sun article. Here's a July 2011 article in The Dartmouth, as well as a blog by the robot development team. The first four photos are from Jim Lever (JL) of CRREL (and Dartmouth), I first saw most of them in presentations by Jennifer Mercer (CRREL) and Rebecca Williams at the 2012 Polar Technology Conference in Fairlee, Vermont, close to the Hanover, NH institutions. The other photos are from Polies on station, unattributed by request. | |
