In 2015 a feasibility study proved the possibilities of an unmanned airborne vehicle (UAV) based mine detection system for the automatic detection and localization of landmines. Various Swiss and German universities cooperate since early 2016 on the R&D-project 'FindMine', a UAV-based sensor system for mine detection.

The FindMine-System will be used in the process of non-technical survey and land release, which is a very important step of humanitarian mine action. Especially designed new radar sensors are attached to a multicopter-UAV platform. The UAV flies typically 5m above ground level when sensing. It carries the radar sensors and a special real-time kinematic (RTK) global navigation satellite system (GNSS) providing very accurate localization allowing ground penetrating synthetic aperture radar processing (GPSAR). After the processing buried mines can be detected and located. The key issues of the system are localization accuracy, radar dynamic range and sensor synchronization.

As a result of excellent research work of the contributing universities over more than 7 years, these key issues are resolved and lots of further research findings are available. 

 

These results have now found a home in the new unit FindMine gGmbH. The start-up-like unit began working in July 2022 and its mission is making from the research results operational systems useful in mine-action and thus a significant contribution to avoid mine victims.

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Shareholder of the unit is the Swiss 'Urs Endress Foundation', Arlesheim/Switzerland.