Humanitarian demining operation using the teleoperated buggy vehicle gryphon with a mine sensors equipped arm

Abstract

Robotic systems to assist humanitarian demining tasks should provide: i) safer operation; ii) advanced methods for automatic target recognition and discrimination; iii) consistent performance with less influence of human-factors; iv) better detection performance, i.e., higher probability of detection (POD) and lower false alarm rate (FAR); among others. Despite many research and development efforts around the world, no practical landmine detection robot has yet achieved maturity for practical use. Nonetheless, the teleoperated buggy vehicle Gryphon with a mine sensors equipped arm has been successfully developed, and its effectiveness both as an access-and-control vehicle, and as an integrated robotic mine detector solution has been verified in many field tests. © 2009 Springer London.