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 experimental landmine heat maps measured with the Fisher M-101 metal detector.

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:

• LIDAR imaging and creation of digital elevation models (DEMs) for the terrain in the Ukraine conflict zone, and how the robot can use these for navigation and movement decisions. This is necessary because the terrain is generally uneven with lots of obstacles, which can block the robot or get it stuck in the minefield.

• Acquiring accurate cm-scale real-time mapping of the ground in the vicinity of the robot. This is necessary to correct the holographic radar images for the non-planar ground-air interface through which the radar signal propagates. This requires accurate registration between the DEM of the terrain and the coordinate system of the holographic radar system.

• Developing a matched filtering approach for using LIDAR images to accurately detect and identify PMA-2 ("starfish") landmines in the terrain. These mines can have the starfish trigger sticking out above the ground and are therefore in principle detectable with cameras.

• Investigating (and implementing) automated tripwire detection (detection of wires through real-time imaging of wires) using experiments with different infrared, visible, and LIDAR cameras and with different wire configurations, wire types, and distances from the camera.

• Using Ukraine terrain data and DEM maps to assess robot maneuverability in Ukraine mine fields.

• Determining the fraction of area that is suitable for the selected robot design and ensuring readiness for real-field conditions to maximize the usefulness of the robot by local operators.

• Field testing Fisher M-101 and F-75 commercial metal detectors using a variety of landmine and clutter types, and mechanically integrating the sensors into the robotic platform.

• Design and implementation of a database for real-time storage of position coordinates and auxiliary information from the robot via GPS. This is needed to identify locations of possible explosive objects prior to disposal.

• Implementation of automated navigation of the robots along a predefined path with GPS waypoints for a complete area survey of a test minefield.

• Setup of a test minefield with (inert) landmine simulants to assess how well we can identify and distinguish buried landmines and buried harmless clutter of different kinds.