Cobham Displays Innovative Mine Clearing Technologies

HALO Trust are the largest Humanitarian Mine Action charity, which Cobham has been working with in Cambodia since 2012.

Today, we were with HALO talking to Penny Mordaunt, Secretary of State for International Development in the United Kingdom, to talk about how we have been supporting the HALO Trust, creating more efficient and effective ways of clearing mines and reducing human risk in minefield operations – helping to realise their Land Mine Free 2025 vision. This included discussion on automation of mine clearance and ways to digitally map these operations, which reduces the risk to human operators and offering the potential to operate where and when humans can’t.

Minehound, designed and manufactured in partnership with Vallon GmbH, has sold over 10,000 systems to military and humanitarian customers and been in used by HALO since 2012 in Cambodia. Minehound allows HALO to reduce the amount of metal clutter that would otherwise need to be removed by hand. It reduces the False Alarm Rate by >95%, ensuring a quicker, more efficient minefield clearance operation.

Innovating for the future, Minehound lite has been designed and developed to provide Ground Penetrating Radar at a commercial build standard, meaning a physically lighter detector with a more cost effective proposition to humanitarian deminers.

Our Amulet Robot allows remote mine detection, when the risk of deploying a de-miner it too high. For example, it can be used during the night or in inclement weather conditions. Whilst it operates, the system makes a map of the minefield, reporting it in real-time.

Amulet UAS deploys the same Ground Penetrating Radar [GPR] on a small Unmanned Aerial System. In the future this will allow the deployment of GPR remotely from the operation, providing them the ability to search a minefield that would be otherwise too high risk or inaccessible for a human de-miner. It provides secondary support in conditions which would prevent a tracked robot from operating. The system creates a map of the minefield as it operates, reporting in real-time. This airborne automation will reduce the reliance on human operators, minimising risks and offering increased rate of clearance in conditions where humans or ground robots are unable to support.