Queen Elizabeth II visited an ISTC project demonstration during the Summer Science Exhibition in London underlining the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society, a charitable organization supporting young scientists, engineers and technologists. The Queen’s advisors selected 5 exhibition stands out of more than 40 displayed at the prestigious event held from 25 June to 4 July.

ISTC project #2541 developed a technology to detect and display buried land mines, even when made out of plastic, which are almost undetectable with technologies now in use. The sub surface radar technology can give a 3D image of buried land mines even in ferrous and cluttered soil that generally mixes up the signals. By determining the shape of objects, the detector could be of great help to mine-clearing experts working in very dangerous environments. 

Princess Diana had been a strong advocate of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and visited mine fields in Angola and Bosnia in her efforts to raise public awareness on the problem. The international organization Landmine Monitor has identified at least 73,000 casualties in 119 countries/areas in the past 10 years and these data are incomplete because of the lack of available statistics on the subject as many affected areas in developing countries are not accounted for. 

The radar technology developed at Bauman Moscow State Technical University, has multiple applications apart from demining, such as detection of hidden construction faults. The technology has already been sold to construction companies in Japan, the US, India and China. Read more technical information on the technology at: http://www.rslab.ru/?lang=english


See news reports of the Queen’s visit to demining project
First Channel (Russian): http://www.rslab.ru/downloads/london.mp4
BBC Radio 4: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00svnn9

Queen Elizabeth II observing the set up recreating mine detecting conditions

To the left, a computer image of buried mines