DEMINING PROBLEMS
INTRODUCTION
Currently, according to OneWorld International , there are more than 100-million landmines located in 70 countries around the world. Since 1975, landmines have killed or maimed more than 1-million people. This averages out to about 70 victims per day or 26,000 victims per year.
Landmines by the Numbers in the world (Source: OneWorld International, International Campaign to Ban Landmines):
* 33 billion - Cost in U.S. dollars to
remove every mine in the world, if no others are planted
* 250 million - Stockpiled landmines worldwide
* 110 million - Landmines in the ground worldwide
* 2.5 million - New landmines laid each year
* 1 million - People killed or maimed by anti-personnel mines
since 1975
* 100,000 - Americans killed or injured by landmines in the
1900s
* 26,000 - People killed or maimed annually by landmines
* 1,000 - Cost in U.S. dollars to remove one landmine
* 350 - Minimum number of different types of landmines
* 70 - Number of people killed or injured daily by landmines
* 33 - Percent of U.S. casualties caused by landmines during the
Vietnam War
* 3 - Cost in U.S. dollars of an inexpensive landmine
Although numerous efforts have been employed to localize and clear mine fields using demining assistance solutions, they still remain clearly insufficient. Often provided solutions are so expensive for countries and organizations involved that they have no alternative to manual detection and clearing. In other cases they only address one part of demining process without considering several factors: field preparing, automatic mine detection, the use of GIS positioning and graphical management systems for mine localization and monitoring, the ecosystem impact or detection methods reliability depending on soil conditions.
BetterWorldTG (Better World Technology Group) makes reality the possibility of approaching the problem of humanitarian mine-clearing by means of a family of robots of low cost that raises a solution from an integral point of view: vegetation cleaning, GIS and field localization and marking of mines, unearthed and even their neutralization. The raised solution provides to the expert tools to be able to reduce very significantly the human and material risk and at the same time to increase the effectiveness of the mine-clearing one since it eliminates those dangerous and repetitive tasks that are susceptible to be automated.
Once a war conflict is over the hard work of mine and UXO (Unexploded Ordnance) removal starts. The demining task is a very slow and delicate process that seeks the mine localization and neutralization. It is vital that this process is exhaustive, it must generate the absolute certainty that all the mines have been cleared; just one undiscovered mine can lead to a human disaster. The demining costs are very high, nowadays it takes about 2.000.000 U$ to clear a square kilometer
The most used methods for humanitarian demining on land are manual detection (based mainly on prodders and metal detectors). Current methods for demining can be grouped into five different classifications:
1. Manual detection.
2. Trained animals.
3. Biotechnologies.
4. Armored vehicles.
5. Robotic systems.
Manual detection:
At the moment the experts consider manual detection to be the most appropriate for the work since these methods provide the operator a complete control on their tasks. But on the other hand they can result in a tremendous loss taking into account that they imply a serious danger for human life.
Because of the stress that entails this work the demining protocols do not recommend a mine-clearer working more than 6 hours continued, in intervals of 20 minutes, having 20 minutes of rest each one. This is one of the reasons that makes the demining tasks so slow given that an expert would cover an area from 5 to 25 square meters (depending on the soil and whether conditions and the equipment they use) . However, these systems are considered the most reliable for mine deactivation.
Trained animals:
Dogs are commonly used in several countries for mine and UXO clearance operations. A dog and his handler reach the required level of performance for field work after about 18 months to 2 years. The cost up to this stage is US$10,000 - $100,000 per dog, depending on location and rates of pay.
Bees are also trained in much the same way as dogs. The reward is food, which is associated with the odor of the chemical of interest. Like dogs, bees can detect areas where the there is presence of suites of chemical used for the explosive fabrication. Then the working areas are analyzed with sophisticated visual detection systems like the LIDAR laser, which detect the concentration of bees on the land allowing mine localization.
The use of rodents is another approach to mine and UXO detection but it is still in experimental phase.
Although these systems are useful for rapid detection on sensible areas their results clearly unpredictable and not accurate enough since they also depend on training, atmospheric and ground conditions (wind, humidity, vegetation …)
Biotechnology:
These methods are based on bacteria or plants genetically manipulated, which change their color in the presence of TNT and other explosives. They would aid demining by indicating the presence of mines through color change, and could either be sown from aircraft or by people walking through demined corridors in minefields.
Unfortunately, these systems already have strong concerns such are the false positive generation, they are applied only to a reduced set of mine types, their dependency on the environment and the climate condition and they can generate a great ecosystem impact if they escape out of the controlled area.
It is important to highlight that this system as well as the trained systems are useless with well-constructed munitions that have not had time to corrode.
Armored vehicles:
Armored vehicles rely on military vehicles derived from the construction sector or the agriculture. They are modified to perform dangerous tasks which consist on stirring up the ground to find out the land mines.
This process is not designed to avoid mine explosions; on the contrary most of these systems do not even make detection tasks. The usage of these vehicles is commonly oriented to a quick clearance of areas of high interest where the importance of the produced contamination can be justified.
The main problems of this method are clear: the high cost of such vehicles, spare parts and maintenance make them unreachable for most of the affected countries. They are only useful in zones where the terrain allows the high-weight/poor handling transit. Additionally the high number of induced explosions affects seriously the ecosystem.
Robots:
Most people in the mine clearance community would be delighted if their work could be done remotely or, even better, robotically since it would greatly improve the demining personnel safety, efficiency and productivity.
Currently only a few
robots in the market cover the different aspects of the demining process.
Usually they focus on the surface preparation, mine detection or
neutralization rather than covering the problem as a whole. A good example of
that is their high weight, high production cost and low or inexistent
autonomy, which make them invalid for real environments and in the other hand
economically unreachable for most humanitarian demining groups.
An additional common problem is the need of well-trained personnel to handle
the robot daily operation activities and their maintenance.
In spite of this, the
community in general keeps on waiting a feasible solution coming from the
desired efficient, inexpensive and safe robots.
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