The Journal of ERW and Mine Action Issue 13.3 (2009)

Focus: Enhancing Mine Action through Cooperation and Coordination | Feature: Mine Action in Complex Situations | Special Report: The Effect of IEDs on Mine Action | Notes from the Field | Research and Developmen

Mine Action: Lessons and Challenges

Mine Action: Lessons and Challenges represents the views of selected experts as to what some of the key lessons have been, and what challenges remain for the future. Following an Executive Summary of its main conclusions and findings, this work is laid out in two parts. Part I looks at the core activities — the “pillars” — of mine action: advocacy, victim assistance, mine risk education, demining (survey, marking and clearance of mines and unexploded ordnance) and stockpile destruction. Part II looks at key management issues, specifically, programme coordination and management, information management and capacity development. This work concludes with a thought-provoking assessment of what mine action has actually achieved

Landmine removal : technology review and design proposal as pertaining to humanitarian demining with a focus on locomotion across soft terrain

Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 42).A study into the field of humanitarian landmine removal was conducted; with significant attention devoted to an in depth review of existing removal technologies, as well as alternative detection methods. A design proposal was also presented in addition to the technology review. The design is for an autonomous robot which is capable of working in conjunction with canine demining units, with further implications for the development of a robotic unit capable of landmine detection. Further investigation was done into the possible modes of robotic locomotion, resulting in the determination that mechanical legs, as opposed to wheels, are the better choice when traversing across soft terrain.by Amanda N. Poteet.S.B

The Journal of ERW and Mine Action Issue 7.1 (2003)

Research, Development and Technology in Mine Actio

Modeling the power consumption of a Wifibot and studying the role of communication cost in operation time

Mobile robots are becoming part of our every day living at home, work or entertainment. Due to their limited power capabilities, the development of new energy consumption models can lead to energy conservation and energy efficient designs. In this paper, we carry out a number of experiments and we focus on the motors power consumption of a specific robot called Wifibot. Based on the experimentation results, we build models for different speed and acceleration levels. We compare the motors power consumption to other robot running modes. We, also, create a simple robot network scenario and we investigate whether forwarding data through a closer node could lead to longer operation times. We assess the effect energy capacity, traveling distance and data rate on the operation time

Clearing the Mines 2021

As at 1 October 2021, 56 States and 3 other areas (territories that are not internationally recognised as States) were contaminated by anti-personnel mines, as listed in Table 1. Asia (including the Middle East) is the most affected continent, with 23 mine-contaminated States. Most are not party to the APMBC. Across Asia (including the Middle East), Afghanistan, Cambodia, Iraq, Oman, Palestine, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Thailand, and Yemen are all States Parties. China, India, Iran, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR), Lebanon, Myanmar, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), Pakistan, the Republic of Korea (South Korea), Syria, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam are all States not party

Clearing the Mines 2019: A Report by Mine Action Review for the Fourth Annual Review Conference of the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention

We welcome the publication of Mine Action Review’s Clearing thhe Mines 2019 in this important year of the Oslo Review Conference, where the mine action community is taking stock of progress made and setting the agenda for the next five years. In positive developments, since last year’s report Jordan has completed clearance of the remaining mined areas that required verification and Palau has determined that it does not have any mined areas under its jurisdiction or control. It is always preferable to report good news, but the reason we came together as Advisory Board members to support this project was to ask the difficult questions, even when we don’t like the answers. This is how we improve programme performance. We believe that Mine Action Review has changed the mine action narrative since it was launched at the Third Review Conference in 2014. Many states have shown great maturity by engaging positively with the project and continue to do so, even when this means openly discussing the challenges and not just the progress. The Mine Action Review works best where it has provoked debate and discussion. In-country coalitions which bring together the national authority, implementing partners, and donors, can use the annual report to pull together towards completion, despite operators working in a sector in which competition is hardwired in national and international frameworks. Impressively, some of the closest intra and inter-sector cooperation has happened in the most challenging environments, where recent conflict has led to new contamination – and new victims

A swarm intelligence based approach to the mine detection problem

This research focuses on the application of swarm intelligence to the problem of mine detection. Swarm Intelligence concepts have captivated the interests of researchers mainly in collective robotics, optimization problems (traveling salesman problem (TSP), quadratic assignment problem, graph coloring etc.), and communication networks (routing) etc [1]. In the mine detection problem we are faced with sub problems such as searching for the mines over the minefield, defusing them effectively, and assuring that the field is clear of mines within the least possible time. In the problem, we assume that the mines can be diffused by the collective action of the robots for which a model based on ant colonies is given. In the first part of the project we study the ant colony system applied to the mine detection problem. The theoretical aspects such as the ant\u27s behavior (reaction of the ants to various circumstances that it faces), their motion over the minefield, and their process of defusing the mines are investigated. In the second section we highlight a certain formulation that the ants may be given for doing the task effectively. The ants do the task effectively when they are able to assure that the minefield is clear of the mines within the least possible time. A compilation of the results obtained by the various studies is tabulated. In the third and final section we talk about our emulations conducted on the Multi Agent Biorobotics Lab-built groundscout robots, which were used for the demonstration of our swarm intelligence-based algorithms at a practical basis. The various projects thus far conducted were a part of the Multi Agent Biorobotics Lab at Rochester Institute of Technology