THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN AUTONOMOUS PERSONAL MOBILE ROBOT SYSTEM FOR LAND MINES DETECTION ON UNEVEN TERRAIN: AN EXPERIENCE

More than 68 counties around the world contain millions of land mines hidden beneath its ground waiting to be triggered. The process of clearing up these mines has been painfully slow due to lack of manpower and the manual methods used. Although researchers around the world have designed specially-designed vehicles and robots to help performing the task, this solution is normally very expensive. Inexpensive solutions, although they exist, often provide a less satisfactory result. This paper describes the design and development of a small, low-cost autonomous mine detection robot that is targeted to be used by the locals of mine-infested countries to check for the safety of their surroundings. It is targeted at solving the navigation problems that exist on other low-cost mine detection robots. A test was conducted to evaluate the performance of the developed robot. Several problems had been identified and possible solutions were proposed.