Detecting land mines

Citation

(1998), "Detecting land mines", Industrial Robot, Vol. 25 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.1998.04925eab.008

Detecting land mines

Detecting land mines

Keywords ChemTech, Robots, Sensors

Chemical Detection Technology Inc. in Austin, Texas, has acquired a new remote-sensing technology that can locate land mines. ChemTech's contract is to build a bench model and prototype the technology from System Specialist Inc. in Tucson, Arizona.

The mine locator is based on a light-detection and ranging technology, which uses an electromagnetic beam to locate the mines. The device's invisible coherent energy excites molecules, enabling a computer to read and evaluate the location and amount of the explosive in real time. For maximum efficiency, the detector will be calibrated to sense a chemical common to almost all explosives.

"With this device, land mines can be safely located and identified from a distance of 2 to 30 metres", said ChemTech president Rodney Boone. This locator can measure explosive-substance concentrations as small as 100 parts per billion, sound an alarm at the location, and document everything on computer.

"Operators will no longer have to walk through danger zones probing for the buried killers with old-fashioned metal detectors," Boone added. Much of the technology used in this device grew out of research done for the US military.

ChemTech expects that working prototypes of a detection device will be demonstrated before the end of the year.