The Demining Initiative

A Collaboration Resource for the Demining Research Community

Vikas Reddy23rd April 2008

Agenda

• The Landmine Crisis

• Cornell MineSweeper

• The McGrath Catalyst

• State of the Planet

• The Demining Initiative

• The Future• Q&A

The Landmine Crisis

• 110 million active landmines

• Still claim 20000 victims annually i.e. 1 every 22 minutes

• Countries most affected such as Cambodia, Afghanistan, Angola are economically backward

• Minefields further cripple economy by preventing land usage and growth

The Landmine Crisis

• Current demining technologies are either too slow (estimate of 300 years to clear all minefields) or too expensive (a single vehicle priced at several $ million)

• Clear need for a low-cost, effective and sustainable demining solution

• Costs $3 to lay a mine, $1200 to remove it

Source : http://diwww.epfl.ch/lami/detec/rodemine.html

Cornell MineSweeper

• Founded in Aug 2006

• MissionDevelop low cost humanitarian demining solutions

• Our Solution Autonomous demining robots

• Flagship Prototype: Gladiator

The McGrath Catalyst

“I really want to congratulate Cornell for allowing this young team the freedom to develop the idea. What excited me the most was that the team … hasn’t made the mistake of so many other groups that set out to find the solution. They’ve really done their research and they’re developing something that’s very flexible. The next step for them is to go to somewhere with the problem of landmines, and I’ve promise them that I will put them in touch with people who can help them to take this next step,” said McGrath.

-Cornell Sun. March 14 2008

The McGrath Catalyst

• Several revelations regarding the ‘needs’ and the ‘wants’

• All robotics researchers working on autonomous solutions while there was no real expressed need

• The neglected human element• Several shortcomings in the

design and research process came to light

State of the Planet

• “The Human Element in Humanitarian Demining”

• “Game theoretic methods to predict landmine locations”

• Reach out to other research groups and share “notes”

The Demining Initiative

• Credit goes to James Mandel (Jamie)

• Collaboration resource based on the Cornell Confluence Wiki

• MineSweeper’s Public resource

• All designs open sourced here. Licensing scheme TBD

• All design thoughts and design queries jotted down here

The Demining Initiative

https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/DEMININGINIT/

The Future

• Publish findings on “The Human Element in Humanitarian Demining” in the Journal of Mine Action. Paper deadline Mid-June

• Tightly integrate The Demining Initiative with Cornell MineSweeper

• Recruit a dedicated wiki manager

Recruiting!

• MineSweeper is recruiting members for Summer and Fall 2008

• http://minesweeper.engineering.cornell.edu• All majors and years welcome

Q&A