From football field to minefield

Field trip: Stepan Lucysyn with Sir Bobby Charlton at a landmine site in Croatia

A joint proposal, shortlisted for funding, will look at new ways of detecting land mines.

Dr Stepan Lucyszyn (Director of the Centre for Terahertz Science and Engineering, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering) and Dr Bill Proud (Director of the Institute for Shock Physics, Department of Physics) have been working together on the proposal, shortlisted for funding by the charity Find A Better Way (FABW), founded by legendary Manchester United and England footballer Sir Bobby Charlton.

As part of the FABW call for ‘Novel Ways of Detection for Humanitarian Demining’, they visited Croatia to gain first-hand experience of an active minefield and current detection techniques, in order to give some context to proposed projects which will be pitched next year.

Dr Lucyszyn explained "in the past, landmines have had a high metal content, but more recently they have become harder to locate through traditional metal-detection methods because they contain more plastic. We are working to develop a plastic detector."

The attendees walked across a landmine test facility which contained one tonne of buried landmines with TNT charge and trigger mechanism, but without detonators) and then observed (at a safe distance) an active minefield with real demining in action.