AN INNOVATIVE NEW WAY TO DETECT
LANDMINES
Robotics and Rats Working Together
Using a combination of robotics technology and machine learning-enabled wearables created for specially trained rats, we are helping animals communicate to humans in service of saving lives.
How it Works.
The rats are fitted with a waistcoat containing a small accelerometer-based electronic unit designed to precisely detect when the rat gives a physical indication of a survivor in a collapsed building or the presence of a landmine all while collecting video and real-time motion data in search and rescue operations.
TEAM
Peter Black, Andrew McGregor, Dr. Cindy Fast, Kuan-ju Wu, Sander Verdiesen
The Human Toll
Anti-personnel landmines were originally designed during WWI to prevent the removal of anti-tank landmines by enemy soldiers. They were first used on a wide scale in WWII. Since 1938, anti-personnel landmines have been utilized in every major conflict.
Anti-personnel landmines were strategically designed to maim, rather than kill, an enemy soldier with the logic that more resources are needed to care for an injured soldier than a dead soldier. They were originally used defensively, targeting only opposing forces to limit their movement and to protect strategic borders or landmarks.
However, overtime, anti-personnel landmines began to be deployed on a wider scale, often in internal conflicts and aimed at terrorizing communities by targeting civilians. The practice of marking and mapping landmines ceased.
Many mines remain from the Second World War. In addition, since the 1960s as many as 110 million mines have been spread throughout the world into an estimated 70 countries.
Despite numerous campaigns and the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, as of October 2013, 59 states and four other areas were confirmed to remain mine-affected.
VIOLATING INTERNATIONAL LAW
Anti-personnel mines still maim and murder ordinary people everyday — they blow off their victim’s limbs, feet, and toes, fire shrapnel into their bodies, and kill.
Year after year, Landmine Monitor reports that between 75% and 85% of landmine victims are civilians.
Further, it is estimated that 50% of landmine victims die within hours of the blast and children are the least likely to survive. And this is not only during conflict the vast majority of countries where casualties are reported are at peace.
What is more, landmines are the most devastating to the most vulnerable parts of our world: they slow repatriation of refugees and displaced people, they hamper the provision of aid and relief services, they harm economic growth by depriving communities of their productive farmland, they cut off access to economically important areas such as roads and dams, and the wounds they inflict often require medical care that is too expensive or out of reach for their victims to access.
Statistics
- Anti-personnel landmines maim or kill 5,000 people annually — that is roughly 12 people every day and 2 people every hour.
- Though the number of landmine casualties is slowly declining, the percentage of those casualties that are civilians is growing. In 2012, 78% of casualties were civilians.
- In 2012, 47% of landmine casualties were children.