Handheld Multi-Sensor System Design Dedicated to Mine Detection Mehmet Sezgin, Mustafa Çayır, Mustafa Doğru, Mahmut Dağ, Hakkı Nazlı, Ersin Özkan, Ferhat Yaldız, Emrullah Bıçak, Hilmi Öztürk, Ahmet Kaplaner. TUBİTAK BİLGEM BTE, 41470 Gebze/Kocaeli, TURKEY. ABSTRACT In this study, a general structure for hand-held multi-sensor mine detection system is proposed. Ideal sensor configuration for multi-sensor mine detection system, requirements of hardware structures, data transfer issues and operational restrictions are discussed. The properties of a sample system designed according to the proposed structure are explained and a new graphical user interface is presented. Keywords: Metal Detector, Ground Penetrating Radar, Vapor Detector, Multi-Sensor Mine Detection 1. INTRODUCTION Hand-held mine detection systems are widely used for path and road scanning operations. There are a few multi-sensor systems which can be operated in hard military conditions 1,2,3 . Candidate sensors for this type of application can be Metal Detector (MD), Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), Vapor Detector (VD), etc. The most popular sensor in mine detection is metal detector. But MD can only detect metallic objects, if an object is detected by MD, operator stops and inspects by eye or special apparatus' to understand what it is. In this case, if we obtain additional information about buried object, it would be very valuable for personal decision of the operator and automatically identification software. Use of GPR presents extra information about size, shape and burial depth of buried object. On the other hand, VD would be superior if it could be used in real time mine detection operations, because the most discriminative feature of a mine is its explosive. If the air of buried object region is inspected by a molecular analyzer, mines signatures could be obtained. Unfortunately this process needs long computation time and it is not easy to analyze mine vapor in real time, for most systems. Moreover there are some problems in this kind of sensors, natural clutters and climatic conditions may change performance of the system. Vapor detection is realized in two main stages, synthesis of convenient chemical structure and creation of detection signal by means of an electronic circuit containing a convenient oscillator and required other complementary circuits. Since military operational conditions are very hard, all possible sensors must be used to increase detection and identification probability of mines. In some scenarios one sensor can give consistent results but in another case another sensor is better than the others. For this reason use of multi-sensor is unavoidable. In this study we present a general structure dedicated for this purpose. Desired characteristics, requirements, restrictions, ergonomics of such a system will be given and a user interface dedicated to this purpose will be explained for dual sensor case. 2. GENERAL STRUCTURE If a detection system contains only single sensor, there is no timing restrictions. When the number of sensors increases synchronization problems arises. In this situation, each sensor should be worked at separate time intervals. Thus aliasing among sensor data can be prevented. By this motivation the following structure is proposed. Generic view of the proposed multi-sensor detection system is given in Figure-1. Main processing unit communicates with sensor controller unit and receives the acquired sensor data and then processes the data to perform detection, identification and data visualization if it is required. Main processing unit performs all high level processes such as driving of user interface, running of detection and identification software. Since visual data has more information than audio, it is suggested to be used a visual user Detection and Sensing of Mines, Explosive Objects, and Obscured Targets XVI, edited by Russell S. Harmon, John H. Holloway Jr., J. Thomas Broach, Proc. of SPIE Vol. 8017, 80170D · © 2011 SPIE · CCC code: 0277-786X/11/$18 · doi: 10.1117/12.896922 Proc. of SPIE Vol. 8017 80170D-1 Downloaded from SPIE Digital Library on 17 Oct 2011 to 193.140.74.129. Terms of Use: http://spiedl.org/terms