<title>Improved landmine detection capability (ILDC): systematic approach to the detection of buried mines using passive IR imaging</title>

Abstract

In order to reduce the serious problem associated with the mining of important supply/communication roads by hostile parties during peacekeeping operations, the Canadian Department of National Defense has recently begun the development of a multi-sensor teleoperated mine detection vehicle, the Improved Landmine Detection Capability. One sensor identified as a serious candidate for that project is a passive IR camera. In the past, many organizations have assessed the efficiency of this technique of detection and reported widely fluctuating results. It is believed that the main reason for these fluctuations is associated with the ad hoc interpretations used by different researchers. In this paper, a more systematic analysis is presented which takes into account variables such as time of the day, time of the year, weather conditions, type of road and many others. A working model is proposed in order to facilitate the prediction of the IR signature of the buried land-mine and is compared with data acquired from multiple trials. These trials were done with live mines (without fuzes) and surrogates buried in different types of road (packed gravel and sand) and during different times of the day and different times of the year.