Land Mines

University of Mississippi researchers have devised a faster method for detecting landmines – millions of which pose a lethal threat to people in war-ravaged countries. This breakthrough could help save thousands of lives a year.

While metal detectors are useful for detecting land mines, they can be fooled by buried metallic debris … plus some mines don't contain any metal. A new system is claimed to work better, by reading the molecular signature of explosives used in mines.

​Even if an armored military vehicle isn't destroyed when a land mine detonates underneath it, its occupants can still receive traumatic brain injuries. Scientists are trying to keep that from happening, with a new shock-absorbing system that could also have applications in civilian products.

To help Sailors and Marines avoid mines when executing amphibious assaults, the US Navy is testing an aerial drone platform that can locate and identify land mines in real time.

The Mine Kafon Drone is designed to seek and destroy buried landmines. Its creator, Massoud Hassani, hopes to rid the world of such mines within 10 years.

SaveOneLife is a wearable mine detector that fits in a shoe and warns the wearer if and where a potentially deadly landmine might lurk nearby.

A team from the Institute of Systems and Robotics at Portugal's University of Coimbra is developing a minesweeping robot to assist in the monumental task of clearing the millions of active land mines around the globe.

An Afghan designer has come up with a novel tumbleweed-esque device to find and detonate mines, a device that has evolved from the wind-powered toys he made as a child.

The SAPER mobile app uses a phone's magnetometer to remotely detect 40 different kinds of explosive materials.

The DIGGER DTR D-3 is a robotic vehicle that uses a chain flail or tiller to detonate land mines.

Physicists have now built a low-cost land mine detection system using off-the-shelf components – including some sourced from online auction sites.

Metal Storm has been granted a patent with important implications for the future of minefields. The system offers many advantages, including the ability to be switched off leaving no explosive ordnance remaining in the area that had been protected.