A great development of technologies for the detection of buried landmines took place worldwide in the last years. In Argentina, a project for the development of an autonomous robot with sensors for landmines detection was recently approved by the Science and Technology National Agency. Within this project we are studying the detection of landmines by infrared radiation. Metallic and plastic objects with landmines shape and dimension were buried at different depths from 1 to 4 cm in soil and sand. Periodic natural warming by solar radiation or artificial warming by means of electric resistances or flash lamps were applied. Infrared images were obtained in the 8-12 micrometers spectral band with a microbolometer camera. The IR images were processed by different methods to obtain a definition as good as possible of the buried objects. After this a B-Spline method was applied to detect the targets contours and determine shape and dimensions of them so as to distinguish landmines from other objects. We are looking for a landmine detection method as simple and fast possible, with detection capability of metallic and plastic landmines and an acceptable false alarm rate which would be reduced when applied with other detection methods as GPR and electromagnetic induction. We present obtained and processed images and results obtained to distinguish buried landmines from other buried objects.

Date Published: 26 April 2007
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 6553, Detection and Remediation Technologies for Mines and Minelike Targets XII, 655311 (26 April 2007); doi: 10.1117/12.719601

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6553:
Detection and Remediation Technologies for Mines and Minelike Targets XII
Russell S. Harmon; J. Thomas Broach; John H. Holloway Jr., Editor(s)