Mine Detection Robot and Related Technologies for Humanitarian Demining

Abstract

Currently, more than 100 million anti-personnel mines are under the ground all over the world. These mines not only disturb the economic development of mine-buried nations, but also injure or kill more than 2000 people a month. As a result, the removal of landmines has become a global emergency. The current method of removing mines manually is costly and dangerous. Moreover, removal of all mines by this method would require several hundred years (it would takes one thousand according to a CMAC report based on Cambodian Mine Action Center Current Activities 1998), during which time, more mines might be buried in war zones. There are three kinds of demining strategies. The first is human deminier based demining. The second is mechanical equipment based demining like Fig.1(Geneva International Center for Humanitarian Demining,2002). The third is advanced robot based demining. Currently, the most common demining approach is the first type. The second type is applied in some limited mine field area. The third type is partially tried as mine detection or brush cutting with the exception of research oriented robots and some of them will be expected in future demining approaches. Figure 2 shows the robotic brush cutter which was developed in the Demining Technology Workshop in Cambodia. This robot can cut grass and bush by teleoperation. Figure 3 shows the four legged mine detection robot which was studied by CSIC-IAI, Spain in 1999(Armada et al.2005). Under this extreme environment, a walking robot may be an effective and efficient means of detecting and removing mines while ensuring the safety of local residents and people engaged in the removal work. The six-legged and crawler type hybrid robot COMET-III(Nonami et al.2003) shown in Fig.4 with two manipulators based on the added stability, mobility, and functionality that this platform offers. This latest robot COMET-III, which is fully autonomous, has been developed by one of this paper’s authors. Source: Humanitarian Demining: Innovative Solutions and the Challenges of Technology, Book edited by: Maki K. Habib, ISBN 978-3-902613-11-0, pp. 392, February 2008, I-Tech Education and Publishing, Vienna, Austria O pe n A cc es s D at ab as e w w w .in te hw eb .c om