The humanitarian clearance of land mines is still a huge challenge:
According to UN requirements at least 99.6% of all mines must be cleared up to a depth of 13 cm,
There are different types and sizes of mines (metal, minimum metal, non-metal)
Mines were placed in different environments (city, jungle, desert) regularly or irregularly and can be redistributed by erosion and surface movements.
In 2015 a feasibility study proved the possibilities of an unmanned airborne vehicle (UAV) based mine detection system for the automatic detection and localization of landmines. Three Swiss and German universities cooperate since early 2016 on the R&D-project 'FindMine', a UAV-based sensor system for mine detection. The FindMine-System will be used in the process of land release, which is a very important part of mine action. Especially designed new radar sensors are as payload attached to a multicopter-UAV platform, and specific signal and geospatial data processing searches for and locates buried mines. The UAV flies in 2 to 3 m above ground level when sensing. It can carry a payload of up to 5 kg and is equipped with a real-time kinematic (RTK) global navigation satellite system (GNSS) system, cameras for the generation of a digital surface model and a georeferenced image-map, as well as anti-collision systems. One of the key issues is the meanwhile resolved requirement for very high UAV-position- and UAV-orientation-accuracies in order to operate the ground penetrating synthetic aperture radar (GPSAR) mine detection sensors properly. The whole system will be designed for easy use by minimally trained operators.
The FindMine R&D-project is supported by the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD), and it is financed by the Swiss 'Urs Endress Foundation', Arlesheim/Switzerland.
(c) 2017, 2019
Veröffentlichungen im FindMine Projekt:
"A broadband UAV-based FMCW GPR and the infuence of vegetation"
> Burr, Ralf; et al.; ICMIM 04/2018; 2018
"Lightweight Broadband Antennas for UAV based GPR Sensors"
> Burr, Ralf; et al.; EuRAD 09/2018; 2018
"A Multicopter- based Method for Ground Penetrating Synthetic Aperture Radars"
> Schartel, Markus; et al.; IGARSS 2018; 2018
"Radar-Based Altitude over Ground Estimation of UAVs"
> Schartel, Markus; et al.; Gemic 03/2018; 2018
"UAV-Based Ground Penetrating Synthetic Aperture Radar"
> Schartel, Markus; et al.; ICMIM 04/2018; 2018
"Humanitarian Demining – UAV-Based Detection of Land Mines"
> Gotttwald, Reinhard; et al.; FIG Working Week 2017; 2017
"FindMine – UAV im humanitären Einsatz"
> Mayr, Werner; 178. DVW-Seminar; 2019
"Design of a broadband FMCW GPR for Mine Detection and the influence of vegetation"
> Burr, Ralf; et al.; GeMiC 2019; 2019
"A comparison of ground-based and airborne SAR systems for the detection of landmines, UXO and IEDs"
> Heinzel Andreas; Schartel M., et al.; SPIE2019; 2019
"Revisiting Boustrophedon Coverage Path Planning as a Generalized Traveling Salesman Problem"
> Bähnemann, Rik; et al.; FSR Conference; 2019
"Airborne Tripwire Detection Using a Synthetic Aperture Radar"
> Schartel, Markus; et al.; IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters (GRSL); 2019
"Position Acquisition for a Multicopter-Based Synthetic Aperture Radar"
> Schartel, Markus; et al.; 2019 20th International
Radar Symposium (IRS); 2019
"UAV-based polarimetric synthetic aperture radar for mine detection"
> Burr, Ralf; et al.; IGARS2019; 2019