The new feature of drones saves humans from performing this dangerous task
2024-09-03
According to the website of The New York Times on August 24th, a robotic dog walked back and forth in a simulated minefield with stiff steps at a US Army testing center in Virginia. When approaching a disc-shaped ice hockey used to simulate anti tank bombs, it couldn't help but tremble. Robot dogs carry a plethora of devices such as cameras, global positioning system (GPS) devices, radios, and thermal imaging on their backs. Military researchers hope that these technologies can help robot dogs detect landmines at close range, thereby sparing humans from performing this dangerous task. Robot dogs are one of the few emerging technologies in anti landmine warfare. Just as drones (usually defined as unmanned machines, not just remotely controlled aircraft) have proven to be important offensive weapons in modern warfare in Ukraine, they can now also provide defense by detecting and clearing landmines in new and safer ways. Humanitarian weapons expert Colin King and his colleagues co founded the UK based Phoenix Insight company to help detect and destroy weapons. He said, "Drones have always been a destructive force in this war, and I hope they also have the potential to provide partial solutions." Like many current fields, artificial intelligence (AI) is driving this progress. For example, Phoenix Insight has developed software that enables drones to not only detect and identify the type of landmine, but also predict its potential location. This software utilizes open-source intelligence from around the world and content about armed conflicts on social platforms to achieve this. In January of this year, Jin paired the software with an unmanned aerial vehicle from the British high-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle professional company Ace and tested it at the Ukrainian military deployed in Kherson, with a success rate of up to 70%. There, the software discovered multiple Russian designed TM-62 anti tank mines partially buried in grass and soil. Ukraine has become one of the countries with the highest concentration of landmines in the world. Experts estimate that about one-third of Ukraine's territory needs to be cleared of landmines. Last summer, Ukraine attempted to drive Russia out of the Donbass region, but landmines hindered Ukraine's efforts and also hindered Russia's counterattack this summer. In this situation, drones with AI capabilities can quickly locate the landmines that need to be avoided, thereby helping to determine the course of action. Jin said, "Knowing where these things are is a big problem. Finding them is crucial for delineating hazardous areas and starting mine clearance." Since last year, Ukrainians have been testing mine detection drones equipped with infrared cameras, magnetometers, and neural network analysis tools. Ukraine's First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Sviridenko said that some of the tested landmines have a success rate of up to 70%. Ukraine is also collaborating with American data analytics company Palantir to develop a system that will use AI technology to study the country's socio-economic and environmental conditions. Ms. Svirichenko said that the system will 'determine which war affected lands should be cleared first'. Since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in February 2022, Ukraine has surveyed about 13500 square miles (about 35000 square kilometers) of territory - about the size of Moldova's territory, and cleared about 1800 square miles (about 4660 square kilometers) of landmines. Jennifer Heyman, spokesperson for the Halo Foundation, said, "Many landmines in Ukraine are scattered on the ground rather than buried underground, so it is possible to see them." The foundation is sharing drone images with technical experts from Amazon Web Services to develop software for detecting landmines. From mine detection to mine dismantling, searching for landmines is still a painful and slow process, and analysts need to spend at least two days studying the images and videos of 288 minefields in Ukraine collected by drones. But Matthew Abercrombie, a researcher at the Halo Foundation, said that when the new AI enhanced software is ready, "the time may be shortened to half an hour". The Halo Foundation also collaborates with the US State Department, which has spent nearly $210 million on mine clearance work in Ukraine since 2014. In the past two years, the progress of equipping Ukraine with various equipment ranging from thermal detectors, magnetometers to hyperspectral imaging cameras has accelerated. Some of the work is being carried out at the US Army Combat Capability Development Command located in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and these devices will be used for military and humanitarian missions. The engineers there have developed their own version of landmine detection software, which relies on drone imaging. They are also developing a handheld scanner that can display the shape of buried landmines to soldiers based on information detected by mine detectors, and then feed it back to a database to draw a map of the location of explosives. The military developers at Fort Belvoir focus on detecting landmines, not necessarily dismantling them. But Kendall Johnson, an expert in the anti landmine department of the command, said that with technological advancements, it may not be long before drones can simultaneously detect and detonate landmines. He said, "I can predict with certainty that in the future, drones may discover landmines, and then someone clicks a button saying 'Yes, that's a landmine,' and then they click another button to remove the landmine
Edit：Xiong Dafei Responsible editor：Li Xiang
Source：XinHuaNet
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