University developing drones to detect landmines

High-tech drones that have been designed and built at the University of Lancashire have been used to locate buried landmines in Cambodia.

Landmines remain a huge risk in the south-east Asian country, and more than a million there people still work and live on land contaminated by mines and unexploded ordnance, according to the United Nations.

Darren Ansell, professor of aerospace engineering, said mines were "a huge problem around the world" exacerbated by conflicts like the war in Ukraine.

"The traditional way of clearing them is with very labour-intensive excavation or using dogs and even African rats to sniff out the explosions," he said.

"But we can use sensors on drones to do that much more quickly."

Located on the Warton Enterprise Zone alongside BAE Systems, the University's facility - Altitude - also acts as a collaborative hub for industrial and academic innovators developing next-generation aviation and space technology.

Ansell said the drones - which cost between £1,000 and £4,000 - can be operated in challenging environments where there is a lot of foliage or difficult terrain.

They fly very close to the ground and can scan an area of about two metres (6.5ft) at a time.

"We've just returned from a trip to Cambodia where we were testing a drone that carried a radar for looking underground and a very sensitive metal detector," Ansell said.

The two detectors meant the team could "evaluate very quickly and detect the mines".

The university is also using new AI techniques to analyse and understand the data the drones collect.

"We can take radar data and metal detection data and stitch it together to improve our quality of detection," Ansell said.

"In the fulness of time, we'll be able to have an indication of what is actually buried underground, the AI will classify it."

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