Deminers around the world face numerous challenges in attempting to detect landmines in the field. Challenges include distinguishing mines from clutter, detecting mines containing very little metal and those mines buried deeply. The HD R&D Program is assisting deminers by developing advanced technologies to improve the capability to detect low-metal mines, and at the same time, discriminate these mines from metallic clutter.

HSTAMIDS

The Handheld Standoff Mine Detection System, or HSTAMIDS, is the U.S. Army's dual sensor, handheld detector that combines an electromagnetic induction sensor and ground penetrating radar (GPR) to detect landmines. The addition of the GPR significantly reduces the detector's false alarm rate, thus reducing the operator's overall clutter investigations and increasing the operator's speed and effectiveness.

PARTNERS: The Halo Trust – Cambodia, Mines Advisory Group - Cambodia; Cambodia Mine Action Centre

MINE STALKER

The Mine Stalker system is a vehicular mine detection system optimized for anti-tank (AT) landmine road clearance. The system consists of a 3.2 meter wide ultra-wide-bandwidth ground penetrating radar (GPR) array mounted on a Multidrive 4x4 landmine survivable tractor. Mine Stalker is equipped with advanced automatic target recognition algorithms. The vehicle automatically stops and physically marks when approaching mine-like objects.

NEMESIS

Nemesis is a remotely-operated system designed to detect, discriminate, and mark anti-tank mines. The base platform a mobile, rubber-tracked skid-steer loader. The detection system is comprised of an electromagnetic induction metal detector array combined with a ground penetrating synthetic aperture radar array that is capable of detecting both low-metal and high metal anti-tank landmines. The Nemesis also can include a propellant torch neutralization system, which is a very high temperature flare designed to penetrate the mine case and neutralize the main explosive charge by deflagration.

LUXOR

The Large Loop Unexploded Ordnance Remediation (LUXOR) is a remote control vehicular UXO detection system designed for UXO site remediation. LUXOR consists of an array of three 1x1 meter wide UPEX 740M large loop, deep search metal detectors mounted on a remote-control commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) Land Tamer 6x6 all terrain vehicle. The LUXOR has the capability to quickly cover large areas of open terrain to locate and mark large metallic objects.