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At present, more than 100 million undetonated landmines left over from wars remain buried worldwide. These mines kill or injure approximately 3,000 individuals each year (80 persons per day), most of them civilians. They represent a particularly acute problem in developing countries and nations already economically hard hit by war. The problem of unexploded mines has become a serious international issue, with many people striving to find a solution. The purpose of this paper is to examine the requirements of the robotic systems for humanitarian demining purposes. It will discuss a hexapod walking robot developed at the Royal Military Academy of Brussels in collaboration with the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, in the framework of the Humanitarian Demining Project (HUDEM).

Considerations for the design of the walking robot according to the humanitarian demining requirements are discussed in detail.

A successful walking robot design for demining purposes must consider functional requirements relevant to this difficult application. The principal requirements are mentioned in this paper.

This paper is the result of the research of the HUDEM project team and it is of value to engineers and researchers developing robotic systems for humanitarian demining purposes.

The 2003 CLAWAR conference featured 130 papers on topics related to climbing and walking robots. The paper reviews the conference, highlighting the areas of entertainment robots, de‐mining robots, manufacturing applications, the use of artificial pneumatic muscles and robots for volcanic exploration.

Reviews the highlights of a two‐day European colloquium on information technology for climbing and walking robots held at the University of Portsmouth, UK, with progress reports on a Brite Euram project.