 In the western United States, wherever the land is flat and treeless, nature presents man with a particularly annoying problem, the tumbleweed. Tumbleweeds move whenever the wind blows. The problem comes when they stop, usually against a highway fence. In New Mexico, something is being done to solve the problem. Students and faculty here at New Mexico State University's Advanced Manufacturing Center in Las Cruces are working on a device that will get rid of the pesky tumbleweed quickly and efficiently. This particular project that we're looking at today was a result of some work with the Alliance for Transportation Research, which is a consortium of state and local highway governments throughout the western United States. The Alliance for Transportation Research, along with engineers from the state highway department in the state of New Mexico, identified a need for removing tumbleweeds from the areas along the medians and the crash barriers, particularly in downtown Albuquerque and Santa Fe area. This group from the ATR came to New Mexico State University and asked us if we could put our students on a design team to address this problem that's so serious to the state of New Mexico. The tumbleweed control problem used to be handled manually, so the maintenance director would send out a crew of two or three. They'd spend a couple of hours, they'd drive along the shoulder, jump out of the truck, throw a hundred pounds of tumbleweed in the dump, and then take it to the yard and get charged for a five yards truck load. So what the district manager in District 3 of the Albuquerque district, Mr. Steve Harris proposed a mechanized solution. And we took it from there. Since this project started, we've actually had several visits from representatives at the state of New Mexico highway and transportation departments, as well as representatives from other state and federal agencies. We've had requests for information about this project from five other states throughout the western United States, from people that represent the flood control authority who have tumbleweed problems with tumbleweeds gathering in the flood control and irrigation ditches, and even from the United States Department of Energy who's concerned about maintaining the security perimeter around fences at high security installations. Originally, Mr. Harris proposed a sort of mechanized drum, and not unlike a farm implement. So we went out to farm implement dealers and looked around for some ideas, and we noticed that the hay baler has, in many products, has fingers rotating through a slotted drum. And so we decided to incorporate that idea into the tumbleweed pickup part of the device. The tumbleweed is sitting in the road being a good weed, and the device will grasp the tumbleweed from along any barrier. We believe that if it's packed up along a fence, that the truck can go along the fence and sweep it from that area into a commercially available chipper shredder. That's a hammer mill type design. The tumbleweed is reduced in size, the fibers are reduced anywhere from dust to maybe two or three inches long. And then the hammer mill is evacuated by an integral blower, then the particles are entrained in the airflow and blow through a flexible tube back into the bed. Tumbleweed is difficult to handle. In other words, if you try to move tumbleweed, transport it through a tube, if you put a bunch of tumbleweed in a tube and you push on one end, it'll break. And if you reach in the other end and you pull on it, it'll break. So there's not a convenient way to convey tumbleweed anywhere where you want it to go. So what we had to do was devise a series of fingers that would direct it the entire way. And so not only does it need to be compressed, but it needs to be transported down a chute, however short this one is only about six inches. But that was a principal problem. I'll tell you it's a wonderful experience being able to work with students who take the problems home with them at night. I mean, you think about enthusiastic students kind of in an ideal sense and what's been gratifying for me is to see that actually happening, that students will contribute in any way they can enthusiastically and cheerfully. It's been a real experience to watch the students grow and develop as they move through this project from start to finish. These engineering students are now in a point where they have to take the learning and the education that they've gotten out of their textbooks and translate it into a real world problem and a real world solution. They now have to interact with the customer and they have to meet deadlines and they have to have real life operating constraints. And I would say that the students that we're putting out of this program are among the best engineering students coming out of any program anywhere in the United States. Now it will be put to test, the field tests will take place in District 3 in Albuquerque beginning at the end of the month. And so in a couple of weeks I think people will begin seeing this out. And we are scheduled a design review meeting in about a month after that to iron out the problems after all this is a prototype. We are also starting on the second generation in the hopes that we will of course need to do that in order to develop this to make a commercially successful device.