The Yeti Robot Looks for Dangerous Crevasses

Rebecca Williams, PhD, Engineering

Rebecca William's research while she was a Thayer School of Engineering graduate student involved creating higher-level intelligence and control software for a four-wheel robot called Yeti. It pulls ground penetrating radar behind it to find crevasses. Each year heavy equipment resupply missions travel to remote, heavily crevassed locations in Greenland and Antarctica. Rebecca worked on the Yeti robot that tows Ground Penetration Radar to detect crevasses.

In 2012, she also worked on Roosevelt Island on the eastern side of the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica in an 8-nation project to reconstruct the climatic and glaciological history of the Ross Sea region since the last ice age. The eastern side of the embayment is the missing link in understanding how this critical region has responded to climate changes in the past, and a more detailed understanding of the climate changes and associated ice behavior will enhance our ability to inform projections of sea level rise into the coming centuries.

Read about Rebecca's robotics work in Antarctica in the Antarctic Sun.