It’d be nice if Salinas would drop the “industry secret” line a little, and be a bit more direct in saying just what his machine is and is not.
The brand “Geo-radar” implies that it’s some sort of
ground-penetrating RADAR. The account of “Arturito” being used to find a body hidden under a few meters of concrete suggest this – GPR, a pretty mature technology, while it can only effectively penetrate about a meter of wet soil, can penetrate over a dozen meters of dry, porous materials like concrete – several times the depth of the body Arturito found. This is not to downplay its potential goodness – a robot that can systematically use a GPR all day with little human supervision is a great idea, and an big improvement on the manually-positioned ones I’ve seen used.
Salinas also says his machine “searches for materials based on their atomic composition”, which sounds a lot like some sort of
MRI, or maybe some kind of acoustic imaging. MRI is good for nowhere near the hundreds of meters Salinas claims, so acoustics seem more likely, perhaps something involving acoustic resonance. Acoustic techniques can penetrate thousands of kilometers, though they can’t, to my knowledge, directly detect specific elements.
Perhaps it’s a hybrid system, combining several imaging approaches.
Or perhaps it’s an elaborate, conspiring scam, intended to swindle investors out of mountains of cash. Time will likely tell.
----------------
Moderator: Computers and Technology; Medical Science; Science Projects and Homework; Philosophy of Science; Physics and Mathematics; Environmental Studies
Geo Radar Robot
semantics is not always just pedantic quibbling. ~ douglas r. hofstadter
