Modern day land mines can be divided into either anti-tank mines or antipersonnel mines.

Although current research and development hold promise for the future of humanitarian demining, the barriers to progress in the field are more than technical. However, even with the prospect of “smart” demining technology, the human aspect of supervision remains a crucial challenge. Each phase of the physical demining process (i.e., vegetation clearance, mine detection, and removal) can benefit from the development of demining technologies. Developing devices and technologies to help human deminers successfully and safely carry out their work is a major challenge.

While international legal efforts to curb the global use of landmines have been quite successful, constraints on humanitarian demining technology mean that unfortunate and preventable deaths of both civilians and deminers continue to occur. Despite twenty-first-century technological advances by Western militaries for demining and the removal of improvised explosive devices, humanitarian demining relies mostly on mid-twentieth-century technology.

Modern day land mines can be divided into either anti-tank mines or antipersonnel mines.