Minesweepers: Towards a Landmine-free World

Detection and removal of antipersonnel landmines is, at the present time, a serious problem of political, economical, environmental and humanitarian dimensions in many countries over the world. In order to foster robotics research and its applications in the area of humanitarian demining, Minesweepers: Towards a Landmine-free World has been initiated as first outdoor robotic competition on humanitarian demining. This competition aims at raising the public awareness of the seriousness of the landmines and unexploded ordnances (UXOs) contamination and fostering robotics research and its applications in the area of humanitarian demining in the world. In this competition, each participating team constructs a teleoperated/autonomous unmanned ground/aerial vehicle that must be able to search for underground and aboveground anti-personnel landmines and UXOs. The position and the type of each detected object are visualized and overlaid on the minefield map. The robot must be able to navigate through rough terrain that mimics a real minefield. This paper describes this competition, discusses the motivation behind it and summarizes the lessons learned from this initiative.