Probe for minefields

Engineers at Warwick University are looking at ways to help deal with the international problem of clearing anti-personnel land-mines.

The work, funded by charities and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, includes the development of a smart probe that mine-hunting teams can push into the ground to feel for buried devices. Researchers Russell Gasser and Lindsay Macmaster say the aim of the work is to give the mine hunters a tool that can discriminate between, say, a rock, a root and a mine before they try to dig up the object.