A REAL naming contest with a $100 prize

Board Ops: please kill this if you think it's out of line.

Would you like to have fun and have a shot at winning a $100 gift card?

A NASA friend told me back in the day that the key to getting every mission funded was to come up with a cool name or acronym that could help sell it. Something simple. Something memorable. Something meaningful to the target audience.

Now I need a name like that for a (for the moment) personal project to develop a real product from some intellectual property that I own. If you can come up with something excellent, you will win a $100 gift card and a homemade certificate suitable for framing.

The judging criteria are how likely the name or acronym is to tickle the fancy of the people with money (good) and whether someone else already owns it (fatal). I am the one and only decider.

So, what is the project?

Many parts of the Earth’s surface are contaminated with what are called Explosive Remnants of War or ERW. There was a LOT of ERW out there before the war in Ukraine. Ukraine is in a class by itself.

Getting rid of ERW is a tedious and very dangerous process. Not getting rid of ERW makes land dangerous or unusable. The loss of use is a huge problem anywhere. In subsistence economies, it’s catastrophic. The price of the danger tends to be paid by children and women.

The first phase of ERW disposal is to find, characterize, and precisely locate it. That is what the output of my project will do when it is successful. The project itself has the following characteristics:

1. It is a system, not a single gadget
2. It is semi-autonomous with a small human crew supervising a lot of activity
3. It uses a proprietary and patent pending combination of uncrewed ground vehicles, cone penetrometers, instrumentation, a central control station, and lots of software (including AI) that may be “in the cloud”
4. The system’s output is ERW detection, verification, classification, and precise geolocation

Some example names we've come up with (just food for thought):

1. Hidden Explosives Robotic Operations – HERO
2. People Protection Robot System – PPRS (pronounced “peepers”)
3. Fighting for Children Robot System – FCRS (pronunciation redacted, a fatal flaw)

There is no precise schedule for picking a winner, but I'm anxious to move forward as soon as we're back from France, or before, so a winner may be declared at any time. Do your best! And, of course, unserious responses are always welcome. They will be rewarded with a laugh (I need one on this) but not the $100.

You guys are amazing! Excellent stuff. *

Contributions

SEEK (Surface Explosive Elimination Kit)
ROVE (Robotic Ordnance Verification Ensemble)
SENT (Surface Explosive Neutralization Team)
CLEAR (Clearing Landmine and Explosive Automated Response)
BEEP (Bomb Eradication and Exploration Patrol)
--
BOOMER (Big Ol' Ordnance Munching ERadicator)
POOF (Precision Ordnance Obliteration Force)
FUBAR (Finding Unexploded Bombs And Relics)

MFERS

Mine Finding Electro-Robotic System

Alternatively, MSP: Michigan Sucks Project* *

Slightly OT: Exploding Cattle

In the late 90s, Mad Cow was in full swing and Princess Diana was making the world aware of remnant land mines in countries like Angola.

Some comedian decided that the best
solution would be shipping those nonedible cattle from England to Angola and let them wander about aimlessly in the minefield areas. Win-win.

( Good luck with your project. It’s noble and needed.)

TEACUPS, DAMSEL, RULERS

Terrain
Exploration and
Automated
Cataloguing of
Unexploded
Problems...
System

Detecting
Abandoned
Munitions to
Secure
Empty
Land

Recovering
Usable
Land with
Exploratory
Robotics
Systems

PEACE

Post-Conflict Environmental and Ammunition Cleanup for Earth

USA. Freedom of Choice *

This is some EXCELLENT stuff! Please keep going. *

Diana Project

Discover Injurious and Neutralize Anti-personnel objects

MOWER

ROLMOW
reclaimation of land from munitions of war

MOWER
Munitions of War Extraction and Removal

ROLFUP
Reclamation of Land For the Use of the people

MIWIH
Move Implements of War Into History

SKIP
STOP KILLING INNOCENT PEOPLE

SAWD

Semi-Autonomous Weapon Detection

ANSIA

Absolutely Nothing. Say It Again.

Names

Names

RenderSafe
Clearance

Back a number of years ago the firm I was working for had an indefinite delivery order/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract for environmental services with USACE Huntsville which was the Corp’s lead unexploded ordnance (UXO) clearance. Some of the delivery orders dealt specifically with UXO clearance methods including testing instruments and a computer program for ensuring areas were adequately cleared the I think was called OECert. We didn’t do the field work, that had to be done by UXO clearance firms, The field crew personnel were all ex-military and had to have gone through the DoD training facility in Indian Head, Maryland. Is the product you are developing something that a UXO clearance firm would use?

Short answer: YES.

There are two steps in clearing unexploded munitions. The first is to find the sucker and know exactly what the problem is. The second is to send a team to render it safe.

Sometimes to two are combined. Think that armored bulldozer with a rotating chain flail on the front pulverizing the ground and laughing off the things that go boom. It's a good solution for clearing a path through a minefield quickly, but not practical for large areas of unknown hazard type and level.

Most detection is done very inefficiently. It's impractical in a farmer's field that may or may not have something in it. Third world is an example.

The system we have defined is an area approach. Its advantages include moving the humans far away from the danger, using "cheap stuff" in the dangerous areas, checking large areas in relatively short times (think square kilometers per day), and a "look forward" capability that begins identifying hazards before the system reaches them.

The system output is something like "at position x and y (centimeter to millimeter precision) there is something that sets off alarms and is tentatively identified as (an antipersonnel landmine for example).

From that point, our system leaves and turns the problem over to a machine (preferred) or human (possible) to deal with the identified anomaly.

I've been advised by experts not to talk in specifics about how it works until the proper non-disclosure agreements are in place. I would be beyond delighted to chat with folks about this, including our proprietary and patent applied for material, if they are interested and willing to execute a bilateral NDA.

My email is at the link.

KABOOM

Kinetic Anti-Bomb Omnivorous Ordnance Mutilator

Skynet *

TERDs

Toxic
Excrement
Removal
Detectors or Diagnostics

BEPRS

Bomb and
Explosive
Preventive
Removal
System

GRASERI

Gelocation
Robot for
Autonomous
Systematic
Explosive
Remnant
Identification

Sort of has a "Siri" vibe
Google suggests graseri may be a microorganism species

TRUMP

Terrestrial Removal of Unexploded Munitions Project

Winner *

TRUMP

Total Robotic Use of My Plans

Ok, here goes:

Obliterate ERW's Now

"ObERWN"

I’ll play

BOOM
Bots on old munitions
Buy old ordinance Millionaires

CRASH
Controlled robotic artillery shell hauler

LEFTY
Let’s empty the fucking yard

RICK ALLEN
Robotic Identifier Covering Kilometers Across Lethal Land Eliminating Nuisances

*I’m going to hell for that last one

Answer: “Mike Hunt”. Question: when do I get my prize? *

The laugh I needed. I knew I could count on you guys! *