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."

Re:5000 people annually

[denzacar]

It's not the deaths.
It's not even the limbs lost.
It's the fact that some unknown area of land is completely unusable and unsafe. And I mean COMPLETELY.
Maybe you can look at it from a distance.
If you're looking for a "cost-effective" reason and saving couple of thousand lives per year is just not enough of a reason for you.

Here in Bosnia we have lots of mines and unexploded ordnance laying around thanks to that lovely party we had back in the '90s.
We also have plenty of forest fires each summer.

Now, besides the fact that we are severely lacking in the firefighting department (BOTH of our military helicopters used for firefighting tend to use up all the FUEL that the army has in first two days; trucks only go where there are roads, and many trucks are vintage '60s models repaired with such ingenious inventions as welding a crowbar onto a gearshift cause the original got torn off long ago) - places where fires tend to burn also tend to be littered with mines.
Or not. Nobody knows for sure.

Imagine trying to put out a forest fire with a backpack of water and a broom.
Now imagine that forest also firing off a bullet or two, from time to time, in a random direction.
Or a mortar shell exploding. Or the ground being covered in mines.
You know? Fun!

So what happens? Forests burn.
Until they burn close enough to be put out, or help comes from the neighbors in surrounding countries, or it rains.
Thing is, if they are burning close enough - that's cause they are close enough to where people live.

That's fires...
Guess what happens when rains start? You got it!
Landslides. Now you (maybe) have mines and UXOs where there were none just a weekend ago.
Who the fuck knows, right?
It's been 20+ years since the start of the war.

The best part?
Finding out that MAYBE there were mines couple of hundred meters from where you used to go to work, and right in the yard of a place where you're supposed to go to work.
A decade after the war ended. In the middle of a populated, urban, area. Right next to a main road.
Maybe there are mines there. Nobody knows anymore.

Then again, not so long ago several hundred rounds of ammunition and couple of grenades were found inside a locked room in the main building of the Presidency.
Nobody opened that door for a decade. Nobody NEEDED to open it for a decade.