AI for Explosive Ordnance Detection in Clearance Operations: The State of Research

TL;DR

This paper reviews AI research in explosive ordnance detection, highlighting current trends, gaps, and future opportunities, especially in risk prediction, and emphasizes integrating AI with operational practices.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive literature review of AI for EO detection, identifying key research streams and proposing future research directions.

Findings

Research mainly focuses on EO object detection, with less on risk prediction.

Opportunities include enhancing risk prediction and combining AI systems and data sources.

Future work should incorporate expert knowledge and improve AI integration with real-world operations.

Abstract

The detection and clearance of explosive ordnance (EO) continues to be a predominantly manual and high-risk process that can benefit from advances in technology to improve its efficiency and effectiveness. Research on artificial intelligence (AI) for EO detection in clearance operations has grown significantly in recent years. However, this research spans a wide range of fields, making it difficult to gain a comprehensive understanding of current trends and developments. Therefore, this article provides a literature review of academic research on AI for EO detection in clearance operations. It finds that research can be grouped into two main streams: AI for EO object detection and AI for EO risk prediction, with the latter being much less studied than the former. From the literature review, we develop three opportunities for future research. These include a call for renewed efforts in the use of AI for EO risk prediction, the combination of different AI systems and data sources, and novel approaches to improve EO risk prediction performance, such as pattern-based predictions. Finally, we provide a perspective on the future of AI for EO detection in clearance operations. We emphasize the role of traditional machine learning (ML) for this task, the need to dynamically incorporate expert knowledge into the models, and the importance of effectively integrating AI systems with real-world operations.