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Minesweepers Robotic Competition Aims For a Landmine-Free World
Hallie Siegel (2973169) writes in with news of a robotic competition with some serious goals. "Dr. Alaa Khamis writes: 'Detection and removal of antipersonnel landmines is, at present, a serious problem of political, economical, environmental and humanitarian dimensions in many countries across the world. It is estimated that there are 110 million landmines in the ground right now; one for every 52 inhabitants on the planet. These mines kill or maim more than 5,000 people annually. If demining efforts remain about the same as they are now, and no new mines are laid, it will still take 1100 years to get rid of all the world's active land mines because current conventional methods of removal are very slow, inefficient, dangerous and costly. Robotic systems can provide efficient, reliable, adaptive and cost effective solutions for the problem of landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) contamination. Minesweepers: Towards a Landmine-free World was initiated in 2012 as the first international outdoor robotic competition on humanitarian demining by the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society – Egypt Chapter, which won the Chapter of the Year Award in IEEE Region 8 that year. It aims to raise public awareness of the seriousness of landmines and UXO contamination and the role of science and technology in addressing these; it also aims to foster robotics research in the area of humanitarian demining by motivating professors, engineers and students to work on innovative solutions for this serious problem."
It is estimated that there are 110 million landmines in the ground right now; one for every 52 inhabitants on the planet.
52 (people/mine) * 110 million (mines) = 5.72 billion people. Unless there's been a recent disaster that killed off more than a billion people that I didn't hear about, I think their math's a little off.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
so do they plan to mail out kits with land mines for us to test with ?
Nullius in verba
That's not a lot. According to wolframalpha, 58 million people die every year. Given this percentage, is minesweeping even cost-effective, or is it more of a charity pump/drain?
Oh I see what's happened here, instead of a flu shot they gave you a context vaccine.
At first I thought someone was going to write a PC virus to uninstall all minesweeper games from every version of windows on the planet. Thank god!
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
Problem is that there isn't any cheap way to demine. Yes, there are clever methods like teaching rats to sniff out mines, but usually the areas where there are mine or UXO problems tend to be the places which can least afford to do this.
Anything in this front is a good thing.
There is also the fact that they are used as a long term area denial measure. An organization or nation that might be losing a war or battle can mine an area, not to gain a military advantage, but to keep it from being used by another party.
.. and here I thought this about some AI contest used to test which algorithms best "solve" minesweeper. :-/
Given 5000 deaths per year and 110 million mines, we'd be better off ignoring them. Most of the mines would decay into uselessness long before they killed someone (at the current death rate, in a century, 99% of the mines will not have been stepped on, and that's ignoring the fact that the mines won't last a century.).
Except that developing the tech to clear existing mine fields efficiently may help when some idiot in the future lays a bunch of new mines. Ideally developing the tech would make traditional mines so ineffective no one would bother using them, but such a notion may be a bit optimistic. However expecting treaties banning mines to end the use of mines may be even more optimistic.
Develop the tech, it will probably have numerous other uses too.
Use Goats.See, goats wander around eating things. Goatset off mines. This actually happens on an uninhabited Hawaiian island (unintentionally).
Good. Then I can play Luminesweeper on my Game Boy Advance.
Perhaps the one that laid mines could financially help the effort?
namely walk a platoon of troops through the minefield? sure could use that in Ukraine right now...
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
... just maybe, we should stop *making* them.
There is a treaty to do just that: The Ottawa Treaty. 161 States are parties to the treaty, unfortunately hold-outs include a majority of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: the United States, Russia and China.
And of course a ban does nothing to remove those already in place.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
203 years from now when there are no more fossil fuels and the sky is scorched black from pollution, these landmines will be the sole source of energy for the remaining humans --- err Morlocks --- an each one will be treasured for the precious contents.
It is our gift to future generations to package these valuable energy resources into tidy metal containers that we so thoughtfully buried for the benefit of future generations.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
Maybe if international treaties are changed to put a limit on the implemented mine's life, the problem can be addressed partially.
There is already an international treaty - the Ottawa treaty bans the use, stockpiling and production of mines. The US refused to sign it.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Drones surveying with IR, metal detector and possibly ground penetrating radar could sweep an area defined by GPS and produce a map of suspect spots.
Such a setup would be so useful for general surveying/archaeology/treasure hunting it must already exist? A quick search shows a few results for agricultural surveys.
I don't know if when they are 'deployed' whether there are regular patterns that could be used for machine recognition? Use a pen of goats or heavily armoured versions of Big Dog to detonate. Or design something like the StrandBeest to wander around and stomp on every square inch.
You could also crowd source the clearance of a particular area, cheap heavy ground pounding robots with video feeds driven around by 'the internet' - potential of setting off a real life mine would supply drivers 24hrs a day.
Losing is "getting out"? I guess so...
Denying an area to the enemy IS a military advantage.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
And those who signed the Ottawa treaty still produce specific land mines parts, labeled otherwise, via offshore subcontractors.
I remind an Italian campany and a French company (factory located in Brasil) - no refs sorry.
Also, if some company is so gready that it commit itself into land mines production, its aim will be to make reliable, cheap, furtive mines.