Landmine Detection at F&M: A Cyber-Physical Connected Systems Approach to Landmine Detection and Reversing the Legacy of War

June 3, 2021

Fronefield Crawford (Franklin and Marshall College)

The detection and removal of landmines is an unfortunate but ubiquitous legacy of war in current and former conflict zones. Demining is a major humanitarian task that can be leveraged by the use of technology to address the complexities and difficulties in correctly identifying mines. I will discuss our NATO-funded project that Tim Bechtel (Earth and Environment) and I have been working on with F&M research students and with our international partners. The goal of our project is to create an effective automated demining system where multiple sensors can work together in a single integrated robotic platform to provide an operator with a complete understanding of a buried object under inspection (i.e., whether the object is likely to be a landmine or not). Real-world minefield conditions in conflict zones also dictate that the technology be field-ready, simple to use, and cheap (with 3D printed components, for example) in order to be practical as a tool in remote areas. Our team has begun developing and lab testing a multi-sensor system built on a commercial robotic platform. In the next phase of the project, we aim to develop and deploy a team of automated yet inexpensive robotic systems each with different sensor packages that can sequentially survey a minefield and reliably identify landmines and unexploded ordnance using the aggregated sensor data.

IEEE Ukrainian Microwave Week

September 21-29, 2020

This September, some project partners took part in the IEEE Ukrainian Microwave Week which was held in Kharkiv (Ukraine) and online (due to COVID-19 pandemic) . 
Within the organized events there was the possibility to disseminate the work done through the presentation of two articles.  For further information about the event please visit the website of the organization (http://uamweek.ieee.org.ua/).

For the articles, please refer to IEEExplore at the following links.