Patent ID: 7978330

Claim:
A method for detecting a target, comprising: directing a laser beam towards an area; detecting, by a detector, the laser beam reflected from the area; determining, by a control system, whether the received laser beam comprises an optically augmented reflection indicating retro-reflection optically augmented by a target, the target indicating presence of an explosive device, the determining comprising: receiving an orientation angle of the detector with respect to the ground; generating an image of the detected laser beam according to the received orientation angle of the detector with respect to the ground; generating a histogram from at least the image representing a plurality of grayscale values of the area, the histogram comprising a frequency count for each grayscale value; and determining that a particular frequency count of the histogram is greater than a threshold; detecting the target if the received laser beam comprises the optically augmented reflection; and estimating a location of the target according to an intensity and an angle of the detected laser beam, the location comprising Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) coordinates of the target.