New laser vibration sensing tech promises to expedite landmine detection
Marie Donlon | November 18, 2024Researchers from the University of Mississippi are hoping to expedite the discovery of buried landmines with their new mobile laser vibration sensing technology.

While current landmine detection technologies rely mostly on handheld metal detectors, a technique that is typically dangerous and time-consuming; these metal detectors and ground-penetrating radar are not always effective at locating plastic landmines, which are what many of the modern-day landmines are composed of.
Building upon laser vibration sensor technology that was developed back in 2019 and that successfully located buried objects at a safe distance from a moving vehicle using 30 laser beams formed in a line, the team developed its laser multi-beam differential interferometric sensor (LAMBDIS). This technology can reportedly create a vibration map of the ground in under a second. It uses a 34 x 23 matrix array of beams, which roughly creates the shape of a rectangle.
This laser-acoustic detection relies on a combination of laser and acoustic sensing, which enables it to detect landmines from a safe distance and with greater accuracy.
To test the technology, the team created ground vibration then cast a two-dimensional array of laser beams at the ground. The team explained that ground vibration induced small variations to the frequency of reflected laser light, which thus created a vibration image of the area. Meanwhile, a buried landmine vibrates differently than the soil surrounding it and will thus appear as a red blob in the vibration image.
“The working principle is based on inference of light. We send beams to the ground and the interference of light scattered back from different points on the ground produces signals which processing reveals vibration magnitude at each point of the ground surface.”
In addition to landmine detection, the LAMBDIS technology can be modified for other use cases, such as assessment of bridges and other engineering structures, vibration testing and non-destructive inspection of materials in automotive and aerospace industry, and in biomedical applications, among others.