TIRAMISU European Project: Design and Implementation of Tools for Humanitarian Demining

This paper presents the most relevant results of the work done within the framework of TIRAMISU European project (Toolbox Implementation for Removal of Anti-personnel Mines, Submunitions and UXO), by the Centre for Automation and Robotics CAR (CSIC-UPM). This project has been funded by European Union within the Seventh Framework Programme of R&D. In general, the works carried out during this project, currently in effect, have been the design and development of tools for training in search of landmines and other for locating anti-personnel landmines, such as: design and validation of e-tutors for land impact and non-Technical Survey tools, and landmines identification for training of trainee, who will collaborate in humanitarian demining tasks; design and implementation of a training tool to be used with compact metal detectors; design, implementation and evaluation of an intelligent prodder training tool for close-in detection of buried landmines; development of a semi-autonomous and teleoperated system for search and detection of anti-personnel mines, which consists of a hexapod robot and a scanning manipulator arm, that carries a metal detector at its end-effector.This project has been funded by European Union within the Seventh Framework Programme of R&D.Peer reviewe

Multi-function intelligent robotic in metals detection applications

Recent technologies for robotics have been offered an effective and efficient solution to safeguard workers from risks in their work environments. These risks involve radioactive, toxic, explosive and mines. In this paper, design and implement computer robot based on metal detection as well as avoiding obstacles automatically. The proposed wireless controlled robotic vehicle can be used in metal detection applications such as landmine detection, obstacles avoidance, selecting best routing without imposing human's harms and workforce aspects. The robotic wheel can sense the obstacles that positioning at ahead of its path, and also avoids the obstacles forward, left and right of its routes. The robot is controlled by using Bluetooth wireless communication to interface between the controller and the implemented robot. Furthermore, sensor IR (FC-03) for the metal detector and used ultrasonic sensor (HC-SR04) for objects or obstacles sensing. The presented controlled robotic designed for desert and dry soil that can replace the human role in avoiding obstacles and metal detection capabilities. The produced robot was useful due to it can detect metals and avoiding obstacles consecutively besides it was effective to select the best route based on the intelligent technique that adopted, the predefined metals by using an intelligent decision maker for route finder in a flat surface environment

Synthesis of continuous whole-body motion in hexapod robot for humanitarian demining

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonIn the context of control, the motion of a legged robot is very challenging compared with traditional fixed manipulator. Recently, many researches have been conducted to control the motion of legged robot with different techniques. On the other hand, manipulation tasks have been addressed in many applications. These researches solved either the mobility or the manipulation problems, but integrating both properties in one system is still not available. In this thesis, a control algorithm is presented to control both locomotion and manipulation in a six legged robot. Landmines detection process is considered as a case study of this project to accelerate the mine detection operation by performing both walking and scanning simultaneously. In order to qualify the robot to perform more tasks in addition to the walking task, the joint redundancy of the robot is exploited optimally. The tasks are arranged according to their importance to high level of priority and low level of priority. A new task priority redundancy resolution technique is developed to overcome the effect of the algorithmic singularities and the kinematic singularity. The computational aspects of the solution are also considered in view of a real-time implementation. Due to the dynamic changes in the size of the robot motion space, the algorithm has the ability to make a trade-off between the number of achieved tasks and the imposed constraints. Furthermore, an appropriate hierarchy is imposed in order to ensure an accurate decoupling between the executed tasks. The dynamic effect of the arm on the overall performance of the robot is attenuated by reducing the optimisation variables. The effectiveness of the method is evaluated on a Computer Aided Design (CAD) model and the simulations of the whole operation are conducted using MATLAB and SimMechanics.Iraqi ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Researc

Guidebook on Detection Technologies and Systems for Humanitarian Demining

The aim of this publication is to provide the mine action community, and those supporting mine action, with a consolidated review and status summary of detection technologies that could be applied to humanitarian demining operations. This Guidebook is meant to provide information to a wide variety of readers. For those not familiar with the spectrum of technologies being considered for the detection of landmines and for area reduction, there is a brief overview of the principle of operation for each technology as well as a summary listing of the strengths, limitations, and potential for use of the technology to humanitarian demining. For those with an intermediate level of understanding for detection technologies, there is information regarding some of the more technical details of the system to give an expanded overview of the principles involved and hardware development that has taken place. Where possible, technical specifications for the systems are provided. For those requiring more information for a particular system, relevant publications lists and contact information are also provided

Instrumented scanning manipulator for landmines detection tasks

This paper presents an instrumented robotic arm for landmines detection tasks during humanitarian demining activities. The manipulator has 5 DOF and it is endowed with a metal detector for landmines detection and a mini-TOF camera for mapping the terrain that has to be scanned. The mini-TOF camera provides a point cloud of the terrain that allows keeping the metal detector at a constant height above the ground and performing an efficient scanning of the contaminated terrain.Peer Reviewe