Inverse Problem Solution in Landmines Detection Based on Active Thermography

Landmines still affect numerous territories in the whole world and pose a serious threat, mostly to civilians. Widely used non-metallic landmines are undetectable using metal detector. Therefore, there is an urging need to improve methods of detecting such objects. In the present study we introduce relatively new method of landmines' detection: active infrared thermography with microwave excitation. In this paper we present the optimization based method of solving inverse problem for microwave heating. This technique will be used in the reconstruction of detected landmines geometric and material properties

A Survey of Research on Sensor Technology for Landmine Detection

According to official figures, more than 100 million landmines lie buried around the world. Although intended for warfare, these mines remain active after warfare ends. Each day these mines are triggered accidentally by civilian activities, ravaging the land and killing or maiming innocent people. To help stop this destruction of the environment and humanity, the scientific community must develop effective humanitarian demining. Mine detection is especially vital to humanitarian demining. The goal of military demining is to clear enough mines quickly to allow troops through a land area. Military demining usually requires mine destruction rates of 80%. The goal of humanitarian demining, in contrast, is to clear enough mines to permit normal civilian use of the land (e.g., construction or agriculture). Humanitarian demining thus demands a destruction rate approaching perfection: UN specifications require a rate better than 99.6%. Of course, a critical aspect of mine clearance is mine detection. Before one can remove mines, one must locate them. To aid scientific inquiry into mine detection, this paper reviews the major current and developing technologies for mine detection. We do not claim to include every technology. Often the details of research intended for specific military applications are difficult to attain. This paper highlights significant studies of mine detection technologies, discussed in several recent conferences and in many recent articles and reports, to show promising directions for future research

APPLICATION OF A SPECTRAL ANGULAR MAPPER ON THE MULTISPECTRAL DAEDALUS IMAGES IMPROVED CLASSIFICATION QUALITY OF THE INDICATORS OF THE MINEFIELDS

In a frame of the project »Space and airborne Mined Area Reduction Tools – SMART” (European Commission, IST-2000-25044), was used set of multispectral images acquired by scanner Daedalus (DLR, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany). These images were classified with different methods at the pixel level (RMA, ULB – Brussels, Belgium) and at the region level (ULB – Brussels, Belgium). The representative set of the training and validation patches containing the ground truth data was provided and used. The relevant classes in the project are related to the likelihood of the landmine presence (indicators of mine presence – IMP) and to the likelihood of the landmine absence (the indicators of mine absence IMA), and are not ordinary land cover and land use classes. These classes were defined by iterative research that finished by approved list of IMP and IMA, that depend on the context. The detection of several important IMP and IMA was not possible without use of the multi-band polarymetric synthetic aperture radar data (E-SAR, DLR). The goal of the current work was to improve classification quality of IMA if only multispectral (Daedalus) images are available. In the paper we report about improvement of the IMA detection by supervised classification methods (Mahalanobis, Maximum likelyhood, Minimum distance to mean) if the information obtained by the Spectral Angular Mapping (SAM) method and a priori knowledge about dimensions and shapes of ther fields were fuzed. The most important omission errors of IMA were significantly reduced, and the application of SAM method was approved as useful for the considered problem

Time to Stem Lightweight Approaches and Focus on Real Minefield Data?

While preparing for airborne IR thermography fieldwork as part of the Odyssey2025 Project between Humanity & Inclusion and Mobility Robotics in Chad, a comprehensive literature study was conducted by the authors From the literature reviewed, the authors identified a disconnect between thermography-related research projects and practical, real-world HMA operations. The importance of real fieldwork, the significance of undergoing a literature review before starting your own research, and the need for researchers to work in conjunction with HMA operators are all essential, not only to those working in HMA, but more importantly, to the post-conflict communities the sector strives to help

Data Fusion for Close‐Range Detection

Two approaches for combining humanitarian mine detection sensors are described in parallel, one based on belief functions and the other one based on possibility theory. In a first step, different measures are extracted from the sensor data. After that, based on prior information, mass functions and possibility distributions are derived. The combination of possibility degrees, as well as of masses, is performed in two steps. The first one applies to all measures derived from one sensor. The second one combines results obtained in the first step for all sensors used. Combination operators are chosen to account for different characteristics of the sensors. Comparison of the combination equations of the two approaches is performed as well. Furthermore, selection of the decision rules is discussed for both approaches. These approaches are illustrated on a set of real mines and non‐dangerous objects and using three sensors: an infrared camera, an imaging metal detector and a ground‐penetrating radar

DYLEMA: Using walking robots for landmine detection and location

Detection and removal of antipersonnel landmines is an important worldwide concern. A huge number of landmines has been deployed over the last twenty years, and demining will take several more decades, even if no more mines were deployed in future. An adequate mineclearance rate can only be achieved by using new technologies such as improved sensors, efficient manipulators and mobile robots. This paper presents some basic ideas on the configuration of a mobile system for detecting and locating antipersonnel landmines efficiently and effectively. The paper describes the main features of the overall system, which consists of a sensor head that can detect certain landmine types, a manipulator to move the sensor head over large areas, a locating system based on a global-positioning system, a remote supervisor computer and a legged robot used as the subsystems’ carrier. The whole system has been configured to work in a semi-autonomous mode with a view also to robot mobility and energy efficiency.This work has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology under Grant CICYT DPI2001-1595 and DPI2004-05824.Peer reviewe