Researchers in Netherlands are developing a radar system that might one day see through solid earth and could be used to clear conflict zones of landmines, safely and at low cost. Writing in Inderscience’s Journal of Design Research, the team explains how the new technology, with further industrial development, could eventually make vast tracts of land around the globe safe once more.
The researchers explain that innovative technologies such as multi-hyper spectral sensors, passive millimeter wave detectors, and charged particle detection could be effective, but are likely to be very costly and complicated to use. Inexpensive methods such as conventional metal detectors and probing of the ground by a human operator are prone to serious error with major repercussions for the operators.
They have now turned to ultra-wideband radar as having the potential to be much easier to operate than the sophisticated technology but be just as effective and crucially far less expensive. The team has now developed a prototype system that successfully detects model landmines in a test environment. The detection rate is always offset by the false alarm rate, the researchers explain. The real step forward can be made if this balance can be made more favorable. Further work and development is now needed to shift the balance between detection rate and false alarm rate.
Source: Terra Daily
