Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) is an essential tool in ATP’s safety armoury.
Whilst routes and traverses are carefully pre-planned, using satellite imagery and past in-field experience, GPR is often crucial to ensuring safety in areas where there is any uncertainty about the underground terrain. Especially applying to crevassed (or potentially crevassed) areas, GPR allows a vital extra layer of in-field vehicle capability.
Mounted on horizontally rigid, vertically floating, alloy poles ~4 metres in front of the lead vehicle, the GPR unit is cushioned within a 1m x 500cm “doughnut” and shows a conical sub-surface radar picture on a cab-mounted screen via a wired connection running within the unit’s mounting poles.
GPR thus gives the crew a real-time view of the terrain immediately ahead of the lead vehicle, showing snow bridges and avoiding crevasses or other potentially threatening geographic obstacles which may lie hidden beneath a thin top cover of snow or ice.
The GPR unit can be mounted/demounted very quickly and, as speed must be reduced to allow a safe analysis/reaction distance, is only normally used in areas where there is (or the geography suggests there may be) terrain uncertainty. However GPR may also be used for:
