Abandoned landmines injure or kill hundreds of people around the world every year. Electronic training mines could make mine clearance safer
I WIGGLE a slim, flat-sided metal rod into the sand, trying desperately not to push too hard and set off an anti-personnel mine. The probe clacks against something solid. I withdraw it and push it in again, at a shallower angle this time, to try to find out how deeply the object is buried. Big mistake. A bright red flash and a loud, explosive "crump!" – the mine has detonated.
In the field, this simple miscue would have cost me a limb, or maybe my life. But I have the very good fortune to be delving into a sandbox at the Royal College of Art in London. I'm checking out an idea hatched by Christopher Natt, a design engineer at the RCA and nearby Imperial College. He has developed a novel way to train deminers, using a clutch of intelligent, 3D-printed landmine facsimiles.
Landmines remain an enduring problem in 80 countries, according to the Mines Advisory Group in the UK. Once laid, they can stay active for decades. Some areas of Libya, for example, have mines that were laid during the second world war. Afghanistan is still coping with minefields from the Soviet invasion of the 1980s, and Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Kosovo and Angola are littered with them.
Trouble is reignited when locals try to clear overgrown, largely forgotten minefields for agriculture. Those who receive instruction in demining are usually shown a few dud landmines, given a metal detector, and then told how to use tools like garden trowels to expose them for later controlled detonation.
Andrew Smith, a former chief demining adviser to the United Nations Development Programme, estimates that mines explode during demining up to 500 times a year, with about 100 of them fatal and another 100 causing severe disabilities.
"The first time many get a feel for the pressures involved in a landmine detonation is when they lose their hand," Natt says. So he has built an interactive training aid that can better prepare deminers for the sensitivity of the vibration sensors and pressure switches that trigger the weapons. Using a 3D printer, Natt has built precise plastic replicas of four of the most common weapons left after conflicts: three models of anti-personnel mines and a cluster bomblet. Each one has an Arduino circuit board that controls a suite of pressure sensors, accelerometers, LEDs and a Bluetooth link.
The idea is that a trainer hides one of the simulated mines under the ground. An identical simulated mine, paired wirelessly to the buried dummy, is placed above ground where the trainee can see it. Once the buried device has been found with a metal detector and probe work begins, the pushes and shoves are transmitted to the visible twin, which responds by displaying ever more urgent light and sound patterns as the trainee nears the triggering pressure. Press too hard, or move the mine too much, and red lights glow while a boom rings out from a loudspeaker.
"As a training aid, its advantages are obvious," says Smith, who has seen Natt's system in action. "When the trainee exposes the wrong mine in the wrong way, the simulation mine flashes lights, or plays a siren, to indicate the mistake." It appears to work: on a second try, keeping a closer eye on the mine above ground this time, I successfully unearth the device without triggering it.
The system will need refining before it is ready to replace current procedures, says Smith: "These simulation mines are a viable solution but their electronics need to be made rugged enough to work reliably in damp ground. And a responsible demining organisation then needs to field trial it."
Natt has also 3D-printed a tough polycarbonate shield that he hopes will help make demining safer in another way. When things go wrong and a device is triggered, the explosion is bad enough, but it can also turn tools like trowels into projectiles that cause horrific injuries. The shield, designed with sockets into which longer tools can be fitted, could significantly improve deminer safety.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Light touch required"
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