The Mine Detection Symposium 2019 and the 7th Mine Action Technology Workshop

The Mine Detection Symposium 2019 and the 7th Mine Action Technology Workshop

The Mine Detection Symposium 2019 hosted by the Urs Endress Foundation, was held on 5th and 6th November 2019 in Basel (Switzerland), presenting last research in Sensor Technologies (Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), thermal imaging, hyperspectral imaging, magnetometer, etc.) to detect landmines, IEDs and UXO using only Unmanned Aerial Systems.

Then, on 7th and 8th Nov 2019, in the same facility, the 7th Mine Action Technology Workshop was organized by the Genève International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GIHC). It has focused on any kind of robotics (terrestrial and aerial), ongoing projects and solutions currently used in Mine Action (mapping, planning, detecting, neutralizing) by end users and practitioners (UNMAS, Mine Action Group, National. A total of 188 attendees from more than 50 nations came from industry, academia, research centers, 71 institutions, including 32 speakers and 17 companies, as exhibitors.

The C-IED COE briefed on the promising Research Project SAFEDRONE (UAV+GPR). Briefings of the SAFEDRONE project and another similar solution, the German-Swiss project FindMine were much appreciated by the audience raising some questions for real applications, although using detection systems mounted on UAV in different scenarios faces many challenges to overcome at short term. A integration of detection systems on UAVs (one, several, swarm,..) should be done.