Afghan Brothers Want To Clear All Land Mines in 10 Years, With Drones

Drones have become an integral part of life. We use them to spy on celebrities. We use them for Extreme Selfies. We even use them for some productive stuff. Until now, no one however, has thought of using them like a pair of brothers in Afghanistan, to help clear their country of all land mines in the next ten years.

Massoud and Mahmud Hassani have created a new drone that can not only sniff out landmines, but can also detonate them safely while humans observe from a safe distance. That’s a pretty big deal when you consider that there are upwards of 110 million land mines scattered around the world. Each year, tens of thousands of people are either seriously maimed or killed when they accidentally stumble upon one.

The Hassani Brothers, who now live in the Netherlands, started by creating a minesweeping robot that was based on a childhood toy that they had loved. The “Mine Kafon” as they called it, could roll through an active minefield and detonate unexploded mines as it went, but that was just the start. For the next two years, they worked on developing a drone that could accomplish the same task, but more efficiently. The result is a drone that can clear mines 20x faster than any other existing technology, and at a much lower cost.

Removing mines by hand is extremely dangerous, and can cost up to $1,000 per drone. The Mine Kafon Drone, however, costs a total of $1,000 and can clear an entire minefield. It’s their hope that thousands of their drones, working around the world could clear all existing mines in the next decade.

Now, if they could just figure out a way to let people control them from home locations, you could rent out the privilege of blowing up a minefield from your home. They’d not only help armchair warriors feel alive, but they’d probably more than recoup the costs of their drones.

Here’s a video of their original Mine Kafon device:

Here’s a video of the new Mine Kafon Drone:

Source: Inhabitat