Landmine Detection at F&M

Hackman Room 212


Introduction

The detection and removal of landmines and other unexploded ordnance in current and former conflict zones is a major humanitarian task that can be leveraged by the use of technology to address the complexities and difficulties in correctly identifying mines. The vast majority of a deminer's time is spent identifying and removing inert underground clutter. Sophisticated identification and imaging of underground objects (whether they be landmines or junk; either plastic or metal) can reduce this wasted time and mitigate the physical danger to the deminer. This demining technology comes in multiple forms and needs to work together in a single system to be maximally effective. This technology includes imaging (with LIDAR-enabled cameras for landscapes, and with holographic radars for underground objects), ground-penetrating radar for buried object detection, robotics and field mobility assessments, real-time communication between different parts of the overall system, user databases that are populated in real-time with field data and which are accessible worldwide, wireless data transfer and communication between robots, sensors, users, and databases, and interfaces between users and the instrumentation.

With rapid advances in commercial technology, the costs are reduced while the reliability and capability are increased (these are important considerations since cost, ease of use, and reliability are important for the end users of the technology in typically poor and/or underdeveloped conflict zones). Real-world conditions also dictate that the technology be field-ready and simple to use in order to be practical as a tool. These developments and the requirements of the overall problem point to an integrated technology approach, where cyber and physical systems communicate, merge, and integrate into a single, connected, decentralized system that is simple, cheap, and reliable.


Our Work

Our research group at F&M has been working in tandem with colleagues from Italy, Ukraine, and Jordan as a NATO-funded team to enhance and integrate existing and proven technology and the techniques that have been developed to address demining in the Ukraine conflict zone of Donbass. The team has been successful in testing object detection and identification techniques with ground penetrating radars and metal detectors, automating identification of both above-ground threats (tripwires) and surface threats (surface-scattered mines), and with terrain analysis in the Ukraine conflict zone. The integration of these various aspects of the system and others in progress.

Click to see our metal detector measurements of landmines.

Click to see our experimental real-time tripwire detection results in the field.

Our work at F&M focuses on several aspects of the system development. These include:


Project Leaders at F&M


Current and Former Team Members at F&M

  • Timilehin Adefioye (F&M '26)
  • Joey Buck (F&M '24)
  • Liyan Chen (F&M '28)
  • Cameron Crawford (American '23)
  • Gavi Fischer (F&M '25)
  • Aaron DiGregorio (F&M '22)
  • Youssef El Gharably (F&M '26)
  • Alaa Abo El-Magd (F&M '26)
  • Ileane Ho (F&M '20)
  • Adem Imamovic (F&M '22)
  • Stasia Kuske (F&M '19)
  • Andrew Lara (F&M '24)
  • Kelvin Lartey (F&M '27)
  • David Li (F&M '24)
  • Erik Lillegard (F&M '23)
  • Ziyu Mo (F&M '23)
  • Roselyn Ovalles (F&M '26)
  • Lily Rodriguez (F&M '26)
  • Gaby Sallai (F&M '19)
  • Ethan Senatore (F&M '24)
  • Inna Shapovalenko (F&M '26)
  • Nina Simic (F&M '15)
  • Jack Sinton (F&M '20)
  • Alex Sobey-Strick (F&M '23)
  • Liv Young (F&M '23)
  • Yihao Zhang (F&M '23)
  • Dani Zoeller (F&M '23)


Background Reading (for New Students)


News Articles, Press, and Other


Project Funding

This work has been funded in part by the following projects from the NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme: