Vibrations could reveal landmine locations

Or ... you could hire someone to walk in front of you. Then when he stepped on one the resulting "vibration" would alert you that a mine was present and that it was time to hire a replacement. This would also help to reduce the unemployment in those areas.

Seriously, having served in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a Combat Engineering unit (Combat Engineers have the primary role of laying a minefield or clearing one). The location of minefields and the mines themselves are supposed to be carefully recorded when they are placed but you can imagine what happens to that rule during the stresses of wartime. I am glad I never had to clear one the old fashioned way by manually probing the ground with a bayonet or similar "tool", especially if there were boobytraps! Mines may still be an important part of warfare, however the worldwide tragedy of civilians still being injured, maimed and killed, long after the cessation of hostilities makes me believe that the country responsible for placing them should be responsible for removing them and paying any damages (as if mere monetary compensation would suffice) resulting from those they didn't remove. However things are never quite that simple, and while mines are primarily a defensive weapon and therefore are often placed in behalf of "defending" the territory of the very people who may later be injured, governments come and go, territorial boundaries change etc. In many cases it would take a team of forensic experts to determine who was responsible for a given mine ... if they even could.

Maybe the solution lies with the people who want to ban them outright. But then people and countries break laws, don't they?

The problem is that once such mine detection becomes possible the U.S. would be the first to make mines which would say; mimic naturally occuring subsoil rocks or small boulders so as to fool the mine detectors. The genious of evil can never be under estimated. The problem with all military hardware is that it can be fool proof only against a less technically developed enemy------- like the use of firearms against the stone age native Americans of the wild West.