in scientists The US has developed a technology that can detect landmines remotely and with high accuracy, reducing the risk of removing mines from current and former conflict areas. This technology, known as Laser Multibeam Differential Interferometry Sensor or Lambdis, works by shining lasers at the ground to reveal suspected threats.
Currently there are even more 110 million landmines buried around the world, and in 2023, people killed or injured by mines 5,700 people84 percent of the casualties were civilians – half of whom were children. According to the United Nations, landmines threaten lives in more than 70 countries.
A mine can be laid for as little as $3, but removing it can cost up to $1,000. Removing land mines typically relies on humans finding them with handheld metal detectors, which is dangerous, time-consuming, and almost ineffective at looking for mines made of plastic.
In response, American researchers developed a technique to detect land mines indirectly, and which can detect both metal and plastic mines. Lambdis works by sending vibrations into the ground while simultaneously scanning the area with a laser beam. Materials in the ground will vibrate at different frequencies, as will the soil too, and these differences are picked up by the laser when it is reflected back to its emitter. The Lambdis system then produces an image that shows these vibrations and their locations in different colors – creating a map of what is buried in the soil.
The technology was developed by a team led by Vyacheslav Aranchuk, an expert in laser sensing at the University of Mississippi. Importantly, it can detect landmines from a distance and can be mounted on a moving vehicle to help scan large areas.
“As long as the conflict continues, the number of landmines will continue to increase. “This technology will be useful not only for military use in ongoing conflicts, but also for humanitarian efforts after the conflict ends,” says Aranchuk.
Researchers are continuing to develop this system. The older version of Lambdis emitted 30 laser beams in a line, but the latest version emits the beam in a 34 x 23 matrix, allowing it to visualize vibrations over a wider area.
Traditional metal detectors used for de-mining respond to any metal object, so it is not uncommon for them to accidentally detect things other than land mines. And an alternative de-mining solution, underground radar, which emits high frequency electromagnetic waves into the ground, has the disadvantage of being easily affected by soil conditions. In comparison, Lambdis produces fewer false positive results.
According to the research team, the technique can be used not only to detect land mines, but also to evaluate civil engineering structures such as bridges To structural integrity or damage. In the future it could be used to analyze products in the automotive and aerospace industries or even medical imaging. Next, the team plans to evaluate Lambdis's performance in different soil conditions and when hunting other types of buried objects.
This story was originally published on wired japan And it has been translated from Japanese.