Controlled biological and biomimetic systems for landmine detection

A realized Tuber <i>magnatum</i> niche in the upper Sinni area (south Italy)

“…Dog is condicio sine qua non for all truffle-related activities, included science. Monitoring is difficult, also in the computer age, given that biosensors are not yet able to mimic dog biological capabilities in scents distinction [32]. For a diagnostic screening it is necessary the isolation of sub-population specific markers.…”

A Comparative Study of Landmine Detection Techniques

“…Biological sensors or biosensors such as dogs, some rodents, honey bees, some types of plants and some types of bacteria depend on the possibility of direct sensing of explosive compounds [10]. The used animals must be kept healthy, have fixed duty cycles, and a degree of effort is needed to keep them undistracted.…”

Humanitarian Demining: the Problem, Difficulties, Priorities, Demining Technology and the Challenge for Robotics

“…; and the direct use of complex biological systems, such as dogs, bees, rats, pigs, etc. ; with focus to support wide range of applications throughout the process of humanitarian demining (Habib, 2007b). Detection techniques, for buried low-metal landmines that are in development can be grouped into three main categories: sensors that detect the landmine explosives or chemicals that are associated with the explosives; sensors that recognize an image of the landmine through scattering, and sensors that detect anomalies at the surface or in the soil.…”

“…Most if not all of these sensors are affected to some degree by soil conditions New technologies are being investigated to improve the reliability and speedup the detection operation, some of these technologies are: Electromagnetic Induction Metal detectors (EMI), Infrared Imaging, Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR), Acoustics-to-seismic waves coupling, Acoustic Imaging, Thermal Neutron Activation (TNA), Photoacoustic Spectroscopy, Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance (NQR), X-ray Tomography, Nneutron Backscattering, Biosensors, Commercial sniffers, etc. (Healy & Webber, 1993;Van Westen, 1993;Hewish & Ness, 1995;Sieber, 1995;McFee, 1996;Cain & Meidinger, 1996;Habib, 2001a, Habib, 2007b. Mine detection represents the slowest component within the demining process.…”