WORCESTER, Mass. — Students at Worcester Polytechinic Institute (WPI) are developing an autonomous robot that can detect hidden landmines and safely detonate them.
As many as 20,000 people worldwide, one in five of them children, are maimed or killed by hidden landmines and explosives planted during wartime across fields and backyards and around critical water sources.
With that in mind, students WPI have been working on developing an autonomous rover and a payload-deploying drone that will work together to search for and detonate these landmines.
In underdeveloped countries, local citizens, unable to afford massive mine detonating machines, use ineffective and dangerous methods to detect the landmines, from slowly poking the ground around them with long sticks to training large, leashed rats to sniff out explosives.
"Landmines are a huge issue worldwide," said Craig Putnam, senior instructor of computer science at WPI. "They are laid during wars, but long after those conflicts end, the mines continue to kill and injure people. Mines can stay active, and deadly, for up to five decades, so finding and clearing them is critical."
Under Putnam's leadership, teams of students who have been working dilligently for the past three years have developed a dynamic duo: the autonomous rover to detect and and mark the mines and the drone that can drop payloads onto the mines to safely detonate them.
Anti-personnel landmines, which are designed to be set off by the weight of a simple footstep, cause traumatic injuries, often destroying one or more limbs and causing burns, blindness, or other lifelong injuries, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
Military-grade tanks or bulldozers, such as the ones used by the United States military, can easily destroy hidden landmines and explosives, but are generally too expensive for smaller communities to purchase.
The project spearheaded by WPI students aims at being an effective but more affordable option for land owners, towns and villages. After a series of experiments, tests and tweaks to the project, the students are close to perfecting their robotics system. Students have also developed a guidance system using Google Maps that lets the user set up a search area and communicate its GPS coordinates to the rover.
"I’d wanted to do something that has a big global impact," said Nicholas Lanotte, a team member who majored in robotics engineering and electrical and computer engineering. “It’s a great feeling to have an impact on peoples’ lives directly. I learned a lot more than electrical engineering."
Students on this year’s Major Qualifying Project (MQP) team include seniors Karl Ehlers, robotics engineering; Benen ElShakhs, mechanical engineering; Eleanor Foltan, robotics engineering; Jessica McKenna, robotics engineering; Joseph Niski, robotics engineering; Adam Santos, robotics engineering; Matthew Schmitt, robotics engineering; and Andrew VanOsten, robotics engineering.
Recently, Prince Harry, following in his mother's footsteps, visited a live minefield in Angola; the same area where his mother walked in 1997.
The program manager for the Halo Trust, an organinzation focuses on clearing landmines across the world, said Princess Diana's walk in 1997 was crucial to bringing attention to the issue landmines have become in more remote countries.
After Dana's famous photo, the international ban on anti-personnel mines was created and signed and was enforced two years later. Land mines have been completely removed from 31 countries, more than 48 million stockpiled mines have been destroyed and 164 countries have signed the ban.
During Prince Harry's visit, the royal detonated a mine that had been found recently in order to show there are still live mines lurking under the ground.
Angola still has 650 minefields to clear and is striving to be mine-free by 2025.
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