Landmine detection project gets financial backing

The £100,000 of funding, provided by Sir Bobby Charlton’s charity Find A Better Way, was awarded via a competition organised by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).  

“The UN estimates that it would take more than 1,100 years to clear the estimated 110 million landmines situated in 70 countries,” said Charlton.  “As a charity we are determined to find a practicable technology solution that can bring an end to this humanitarian tragedy.”

Modern landmines are usually made from plastic rather than metal, rendering traditional techniques for identifying them useless. The team from Bath University is looking to combine metal detection with new imaging technology that relies on 3D cameras, allowing for all types of landmines to be identified.

“Currently, manual metal detectors sweep minefields in a slow and time-consuming process which cannot detect non-metallic landmines,” said Dr Manuchehr Soleimani, associate professor in the Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering and leader of the Engineering Tomography Lab (ETL) at Bath University.