Design and Development of a Quadcopter for Landmine Detection

In the field of aviation, Unmanned Arial Vehicles (UAV) play a prominent role as they can be controlled remotely by a ground based controller and some have the ability to fly autonomously using an autopilot system. They can be employed to perform tasks like surveillance in high altitude, inspection in a large area, transportation and they can be even used for some military activities. Landmines are common threats to the military, civilians and animals. Innocent people lose their lives or limbs to these deadly weapons every year. MQUAD is a hardware and software solution to detect landmines in a landmine contaminated area. It can alert the demining squad about the exact location of the detected landmine. All the parts for quadcopter frame are 3D designed and printed using PLA material to reduce the overall weight of the system. Flight controller for M-QUAD is developed using a gyroscope and accelerometer module and a microcontroller. Radio Frequency (RF) receiver connected to Flight Controller controls the movements of the quadcopter. Pitch, Roll, Yaw and Throttle movements of the quadcopter are controlled by a RF Transmitter. An IOT based metal detector is developed and employed to detect landmines and the sharp metal fragments inside them. A GPS Location Alerting system is designed to share the location of the detected Landmines with the demining squad. M-QUAD was hovered manually to detect landmine like metal structures and the location of the detected metal items were observed with the help of the Mobile Application. Three detection coils with different diameters were employed during the experiment to observe the change in detection range for each coil. Detection coil of 14cm diameter detects up to a depth of 25cm. This system will serve as a useful tool to eradicate landmines and save innocent lives.