BOZEMAN, Mont. -­ New technology for identifying hidden explosives is being jointly developed by a Montana company and the U.S. Navy. The technology may help to reclaim former military firing and bombing ranges in this country and be used to detect dangerous land mines in other parts of the world. Rocky Mountain Adaptive Software (RMAS) of Missoula, Montana, recently signed an agreement with the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, DC, to improve methods for detecting buried unexploded ordnance (UXO), such as land mines or live artillery rounds. The agreement was facilitated by the MSU TechLink center in Bozeman, Mont., and NRL¹s Office of Technology Transfer.

Approximately 10 million acres within the continental United States are contaminated with dangerous UXO, and vast acreages elsewhere in the world are bristling with deadly land mines. While the UXO remain, these lands cannot be put into productive use. The cost to locate, identify, and dispose of UXO in this country is estimated at $500 billion. This cost could be substantially reduced by an improved method of locating and identifying UXO.

The primary challenge is to distinguish UXO from harmless metal scraps without actually digging up the objects. While existing UXO detection technologies can readily detect buried metal objects, they have difficulty determining which of these objects are dangerous UXO. The resulting high ³false positive² rate greatly increases the expense of decontaminating UXO-laden lands, because all metal objects detected must be carefully unearthed to ensure that no dangerous objects remain.

RMAS, a start-up company, is developing software for automated ³feature-selection² applications using a proprietary machine-learning approach. The software can be adapted to many different automated data-mining tasks. By a digital age process of ³on-the-job² training, the RMAS software is able to rapidly ³learn² from its mistakes and become very efficient at its tasks.

Under the recently signed agreement, the Naval Research Laboratory will evaluate the RMAS software for identifying UXO and the two parties will jointly develop the improved detection methods. This project may provide substantial savings to the U.S. military and help in decontaminating UXO-laden lands worldwide.

The MSU TechLink Center is funded by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to link companies in Montana and the surrounding region with DoD centers for joint research and technology transfer. One of its primary objectives is to contribute to the success of technology-based companies, such as RMAS, in the state and region.

Contacts:
Dr. Will Swearingen
MSU TechLink
406) 994-7704
wds@montana.edu

Dr. David Opitz
President, RMAS
(406) 243-2831
opitz@helena.cs.umt.edu

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