Year: 2015.
Project type: Horizon 2020 – SMEInstrument Ph1
Participants: CATUAV.
Today there are 110M landmines deployed in 78 countries, including in Europe, killing up to 20,000 a year. The removal of landmines is slow and manual, dangerous (for every 5000 mines cleared 1 worker is killed and 2 injured), and costly ($300–1000 to remove 1 mine). In the past 5 years less than 1000 km2 worldwide were cleared of mine. At this pace it will take 1100yrs to remove all the landmines. To meet these needs we created the Anti-Landmine Drone (ALDrone) a small, lightweight drone that detects landmines using a multispectral camera to spot the erosion created by the decomposition of the chemical elements in a mine. Our system can cover the same area in 1 day that other landmine detection methods take a month to cover, using an off-site central control station meaning no chance of explosion while locating mines, thus preventing the loss of lives. Our solution has a competitive cost to make it available to as many countries as possible.
In our feasibility study we analysed the best frequencies for the new optical sensor to increase the accuracy of the system. In parallel we evaluated the commercial availability of GALILEO/EGNOSS receivers since the European GNSS infrastructure is relatively new and made a preliminary specification and requirements analysis of the front-end which must be provided to end-users in order to allow a usable and safe experience.