‘Smart’ robotic sensors monitor activity at Mount St. Helens

A sensor monitors volcanic activity sits inside Mount St. Helens’ crater as a helicopter sits nearby. (Rick LaHusen/USGS)

Zachary Kaufman/The Columbian WSUV computer science professor Wen Zhan Song, talks about a project that will deploy pods inside the crater of Mount St. Helens and use new technologies to monitor the volcano’s activity.

They’d worked two years for this day, and it was perfect. The sun was shining, the air was cool and dense, and Mount St. Helens refrained from blowing her unforgiving wind.

They drove up around 11 a.m., two hydrologists from U.S. Geological Survey, the computer science professor from Washington State University Vancouver and a carload of graduate students who had worked on the volcano project with them.

Two years ago, WSU Vancouver Professor WenZhan Song, hydrologist Rick LaHusen and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory teamed up to create a more robust communication system for the volcano, which went back to sleep after three years of eruptions in July.

Their goal was odd almost, and they knew they were sticking their necks out in the field of volcano monitoring. No one else is putting this amount of data through this type of hardware. Scientists from NASA, even, are watching, wondering whether they could use this technology on another gravelly, barren landscape: Mars.

Aided by a $1.63 million NASA grant, Song and LaHusen designed a dozen “smart” sensors that talk to each other and link to a central information hub.

“The sensors are always looking to see what the best route is in case an instrument has some kind of catastrophic event — ice, snow burial, or the ash might blow one way,” LaHusen said. “They can relay data between themselves, making short hops that are more energy efficient.”

The sensors are powered by industrial-strength alkaline batteries packed into weather-proof, white boxes and secured onto four-foot, three-legged metal “spiders.” Toddling inside Mount St. Helens moonlike crater, they resemble the homing spider droids from Star Wars, which, incidentally, are also equipped with sensors.

Last week, on deployment day, the sensors worked beautifully.

The first node immediately connected with Johnston Ridge Observatory, the central hub, located atop the Mount St. Helens visitor center to the north.

As the second sensor was being flown by helicopter to the crater, it fired up and connected with the sensor in the crater and the yet-to-be deployed sensors on the ground.

“WenZhan was really excited,” LaHusen said. “He was dancing around.”

Song moved to the United States from China in 2001, just before the 9/11 attacks. Radio communication on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, was shoddy and fractured; Song said that an ad hoc radio system could have facilitated communication between firefighters.

As it is, most radios, like cell phones, relay information first to a hub, then to another radio. Having a hub in a vulnerable place, such as the World Trade Towers on the day of the attacks, hinders communication.

Or if a coal mine collapses, wireless nodes could root out where the network is broken, and where miners are trapped. Song recently received $20,000 seed money from Boeing to research such wireless networks.

For now, Mount St. Helens is the pilot project. The sensors are two inch by one inch wafers inside the box and pick up on movements that are then sent to the visitor center. From there, they go to the Internet, where anyone with a password could access the information.

The information comes in the form of sin waves — a steady line that starts to bounce up and down rapidly indicates a rock fall. A line that stays shaky could indicate an earthquake, or in scientific parlance, “earthquake swarms.”

And, in a coup that could make the futuristic Star Wars appear archaic, the scientists may be able to receive more serious information by e-mail or cell phone.

Isolde Raftery: 360-735-4546 or isolde.raftery@columbian.com.