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At present, more than 100 million undetonated landmines left over from wars remain buried worldwide. These mines kill or injure approximately 3,000 individuals each year (80 persons per day), most of them civilians. They represent a particularly acute problem in developing countries and nations already economically hard hit by war. The problem of unexploded mines has become a serious international issue, with many people striving to find a solution. The purpose of this paper is to examine the requirements of the robotic systems for humanitarian demining purposes. It will discuss a hexapod walking robot developed at the Royal Military Academy of Brussels in collaboration with the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, in the framework of the Humanitarian Demining Project (HUDEM).

Considerations for the design of the walking robot according to the humanitarian demining requirements are discussed in detail.

A successful walking robot design for demining purposes must consider functional requirements relevant to this difficult application. The principal requirements are mentioned in this paper.

This paper is the result of the research of the HUDEM project team and it is of value to engineers and researchers developing robotic systems for humanitarian demining purposes.

Humanitarian demining is addressed as an engineering‐driven duty, aiming at optimal price/effectiveness figures, joining low‐cost robotics and flexible automation. The mine sweeping is highly dangerous task, and safety is sought by automatic rigs, with remote steering and control. The small price is achieved with resort to locally available equipment, technology and know‐how.

The robotic solutions are split at three levels: the mobility enabler, exploiting standard agricultural machinery; the demining outfits, specialising cheap end‐effectors; the robot path planner, exploring reliable remote govern options. The approach aims at the pace‐wise deployment of consistent rigs with assessed productivity and tiny investment.

The paper explores basic ideas to modify common agricultural machines, placing in front proper effectors and specifying the guidelines needed to choose both carriers and suitable demining tools. The remote command logic of the suggested demining strategy is then outlined, specifying the communication and instrumentation for the case study. Finally, the warning/emergency occurrences management is described.

The ensuing robotic equipment joins the remote‐command abilities, with safe and reliable management of dangerous tasks and emergency healing, to the technological appropriateness (shared know‐how and commitment) and the price tag fitness (on‐place device availability). The final set‐up grants dramatic up‐grading, as compared with the current demining practice.

Unmanned mine‐clearing is presently a sophisticated accomplishment of the industrialised countries' armies. By the prospected methods/fixtures, the technical/economic feasibility of the practice is shown to be practicable in third‐world countries.

The aim of this paper is to introduce a hexapod walking robot specifically designed for applications in humanitarian demining, intended to operate autonomously for several hours. To this end, the paper presents an experimental study for the evaluation of its energy efficiency.

First, the interest of using a walking robot for detection and localization of anti-personnel landmines is described, followed by the description of the mechanical system and the control architecture of the hexapod robot. Second, the energy efficiency of the hexapod robot is assessed to demonstrate its autonomy for performing humanitarian demining tasks. To achieve this, the power consumed by the robot is measured and logged, with a number of different payloads placed on-board (always including the scanning manipulator arm assembled on the robot front end), during the execution of a discontinuous gait on flat terrain.

The hexapod walking robot has demonstrated low energy consumption when it is carrying out several locomotion cycles with different loads on it, which is fundamental to have a desired autonomy. It should be considered that the robot has a mass of about 250 kg and that it has been loaded with additional masses of up to 170 kg during the experiments, with a consumption of mean power of 72 W, approximately.

This work provides insight on the use of a walking robot for humanitarian demining tasks, which has high stability and an autonomy of about 3 hours for a robot with high mass and high payload. In addition, the robot can be supervised and controlled remotely, which is an added value when it is working in the field.

Outlines sustainable humanitarian demining procedures and some of the breaching and post‐conflict demining equipment currently in use. Explains that several projects have proposed the use of autonomous robots to search for antipersonnel mines. However, none has solved the problem which exists on the sensor side, and it will take several years before a combination of sensors will be available and sufficiently tested in order to give full confidence that all the mines have been discovered. Describes the major problems facing humanitarian deminers, including the need for cost‐effectiveness and the difficulty of defining the precise boundaries of suspected minefields.

The purpose of the study was to identify the economic impacts of landmine clearance on household livelihoods and to present the qualitative findings of a study undertaken in the Kurdish region of Iraq.

The sampling method followed a case series, purposive sampling design. Five recipient households were interviewed from different districts. In addition, purposively selected program staff (N = 4) and local community leaders (N = 2) were interviewed. When undertaking the thematic analysis of the Kurdish household qualitative interviews, it became very apparent that the Kurdish informants did not talk in terms of economic outcomes as a result of demining. The data were then re-analyzed using a narrative framework and reported in this paper.

While the research sought a link between demining, livelihoods, poverty reduction and economic development, the respondents told another story. Their story focused on the social consequences of returning to their “grandfather’s land”. Participants’ narratives told of resilience resulting from negotiation with the environment and the importance of regaining one’s identity and hopes to heal in the face of adversity.

The findings cannot be generalized to all mine action program recipients but have salience for rural households in the site of inquiry.

The paper is rare in illustrating the social benefits of post-conflict demining and its links with social capital and collective resilience.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the adequacy of International Mine Action Standards 09.20 (IMAS 09.20) and the used standards ISO 2859 in the context of demining.

The authors show how the actual quality level acceptable quality limit (AQL) significantly affects the average total quality cost for one lot with a single sampling plan and, consequently, the average total quality cost, and as AQL increases, the cost of rejecting a lot and the cost of sampling increase.

The sampling plans for demining are not always optimal given economical and other concerns and that other mechanisms should be considered.

Addressing opportunity costs for adopting wide samplings plans instead of clearing uncleared land per default, as well as balancing producer and consumer consequences seems, therefore, to be highly relevant from a socio-economical perspective.

The general understanding of quality management and the systems involved are limited within the mine action sector. IMAS and most national mine action standards provide only a fairly narrow description of the issue. This implies that the field is missing opportunities to achieve efficiency and effectiveness, as well as to learn from and improve upon past experiences. The authors demonstrate herein that sampling provides little additional confidence as to whether a particular area is free from explosive hazards and substantial savings can be made compared to the current practice.

There is a widespread belief that the global land‐mine problem can be solved using a combination of advanced robotics, sophisticated sensors and powerful computing devices. Recent research results suggest that this confidence is misplaced. There is little likelihood of sensing improvements in the short‐term and all the proposed robotic solutions are too expensive to be practical for humanitarian demining operations in countries like Angola, Afghanistan and Cambodia. However, simple equipment improvements and low‐cost robotic devices might provide some useful improvements in safety and cost‐effectiveness in the short‐ to medium‐term. Reviews contributions in robotics and sensing technology, and proposes some practical directions for future work.

Leaders of the world economy take the infrastructure dimension of the environment for granted. As these leaders attempt to develop trade with third‐world countries they are naÏve about constraints placed on development by past civil strife. When the international community helps to reconstruct and develop trade with these countries it must acknowledge the damage often caused during the conflict. Often this means dealing with the removal of landmines. Economic leaders often relate rebuilding the infrastructure and ridding the country of landmines to the military even while militaries are ill equipped for this. Concludes that an understanding of the intricate nature of infrastructure issues in the transition from conflict and strife to peace must be built.

The purpose of this paper is to present a path planning algorithm for a non‐circular shaped mobile robot to autonomously navigate in an unknown area for humanitarian demining. For that purpose the path planning problem comes down to planning a path from some starting location to a final location in an area so that the robot covers all the reachable positions in the area while following the planned path.

The proposed algorithm uses occupancy grid map representation of the area. Every free cell in the grid map represents a node in the graph being searched to find the complete coverage path. The complete coverage path is followed by the dynamic window algorithm, which includes robot's kinematic and dynamic constraints.

The proposed algorithm finds the complete coverage path in the graph accounting for the dimensions of the mobile robot, where non‐circular shaped robots can be easily included. The algorithms are implemented under the ROS (robot operating system) and tested in the stage 3D simulator for mobile robots with a randomly generated simulation map of an unknown area.

Some parts of the area close to obstacles are hard to cover due to complex non‐circular shaped robot and non‐perfect path following. The future work should include better path following algorithm.

The proposed algorithm has shown itself as effective and could meet the working demands of humanitarian demining.

The algorithm proposed in the paper enables complete coverage path planning of non‐circular shaped robots in unknown areas.