f ALIS- GPR 3-D IMAGING FOR HUMANITARIAN DEMINING

Humanitarian demining is very important issue not only in mine affected courtiers but also for the courtiers which are technically, politically and financially supporting the mine affected courtiers. In order to achieve higher efficiency of the mine clearance operation, new technologies can significantly contribute to the societies. Since 2002, Tohoku University, Japan has developed a sensor system “ALIS” for humanitarian demining. ALIS is a hand-held dual sensor, which combines an electromagnetic induction sensor (EMI) and a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR). We need to establish a high-resolution, high-precision GPR system for this task. In order to reconstruct 3D GPR image with high resolution, the position tracking of the antenna is a key issue. We have developed a sensor tracking system with CCD camera and image processing. Although this is a hand-held system, GPR data can be processed with location information, therefore we can obtain 3-D GPR image on site. We think it is a quite unique system, and validated its potential in real operations. We have tested ALIS in Cambodia and found that it can eliminate more than 70% metal fragments. Since 2009, 2 sets of ALIS have detected more than 80 anti-personnel mines, and cleared more than 137,000m2 in Cambodia.