First results: Robot mapping of areas contaminated by landmines and unexploded ordnance

摘要

Landmines and unexploded ordnance are a se-<br/>rious threat to the life and livelihood in post conflict areas<br/>in many parts of the world. In addition to the many casual-<br/>ties each year, the inaccessible roads and loss of cultivated<br/>areas have a significant impact on the local economy. Many<br/>organisations are running humanitarian demining projects<br/>to clear the contaminated areas. But progress is slow since<br/>mine clearance is a very time-consuming process, and there<br/>is no room for error since most existing techniques involves<br/>an operator on site. A number of research projects have<br/>demonstrated various mine detection robot prototypes dur-<br/>ing the past decade, yet robots do not seem to be utilized<br/>in practical humanitarian demining projects.<br/>The Biosystems Engineering Group at the University<br/>of Southern Denmark collaborates with companies experi-<br/>enced in design of all-terrain vehicles and sensor technology<br/>to develop autonomous tool carriers for use in biological<br/>production applications. This article presents the first re-<br/>sults applying this combined knowledge and experience to<br/>humanitarian demining.<br/>The aim is to develop a low-cost, reliable, efficient and<br/>user-friendly robot capable of detecting and mapping land-<br/>mines. It is hypothesized that with the exception of very<br/>inaccessible terrain an autonomous robot will be more ef-<br/>ficient and reliable for mapping detected landmines than<br/>manual methods using the same sensor technology. At the<br/>same time it does not expose the operator to the risk of<br/>harm.<br/>This paper presents the first results from the project.<br/>The existing robot platform design has been simplified to<br/>lower cost and allow repair in the field with limited tools and<br/>spare parts. The robot will be able to utilize various mine<br/>detection implements and support different detection meth-<br/>ods simultaneously. The FroboMind architecture based on<br/>Robot Operating System (ROS) is used for robot control.<br/>Software components will be released as open-source for<br/>others to build upon.<br/>