Land mines pose a serious threat to civilians and military troops. A 1996 UNICEF report estimated that 110 million land mines are spread across 64 countries. Many of these mines are left over from old conflicts, and military and humanitarian leaders alike are anxious to locate and disarm them. The military uses unmanned planes to videotape areas that may harbor land mines. The biggest problem with existing technology is that on tape, the land mines resemble harmless rocks and trees. Advanced computer technology developed by an ONR-sponsored researcher at Johns Hopkins University can find above-ground mines in an aerial picture in less than a minute.
The technology uses a series of complex mathematical steps to filter out unwanted material in the surveillance images and locate the land mines with a high degree of accuracy. With further refining, the new system should produce results superior to existing aerial mine detection systems.