Former refugees Massoud and Mahmud Hassani stunned the world three years ago with an invention like a dandelion puffball that sought to rid the world of landmines. Now the Afghan brothers are back with their latest creation: A low-cost drone to detect and destroy mines, which each year claim thousands of lives.
Ridding the world of their childhood horror has become the life work of the Hassanis, who now live in the Netherlands.
In 2013, they won worldwide acclaim for the mine kafon — a giant ball shaped like a dandelion-seed head that rolls around with the wind, its plastic stalks tripping landmines in the process.
Photo: AFP
Inspired by their childhood toys, the kafon — short for kafondan, which in the Hassanis’ native Dari language means “something that explodes” — drew high praise from anti-landmine organizations.
Their latest mine-hunting device combines drone technology, 3D printing and robotics with a metal detector to find and ultimately destroy landmines.
Hinged on six arms with rotors that creates lift, the 4.5kg drone consists of a blue, hard-plastic casing that contains batteries, computer hardware and software and GPS. A robotic arm slung underneath is fitted with pincers that can remotely be opened and closed. The pincers can carry a metal detector or a small explosive charge, which the brothers say can be used to destroy a landmine.
The onboard GPS allows it to plot its course via computer.
Massoud said that the drone works in three stages: mapping, detecting and destroying.
When deployed, a 3D mapping system scans the section that needs to be demined. The mapped area is swept by the drones carrying a metal detector on a pre-programmed path.
“This way the minefield in question can be scanned inch-by-inch,” Massoud said at his workshop in the southern Dutch city of Eindhoven.
Finally, the plan is to destroy the mines by using the drone to place a small charge on every mine to detonate them.
“We believe this way mines can be cleared about 20 times faster than what they are now,” Massoud said.
So far the duo have built three working prototypes and have carried out demonstrations for the Dutch military, which said it is willing to help with further testing.
“Clearing minefields is an incredibly time-consuming process,” Major Fred de Vries of the Dutch army’s explosives ordnance disposal unit said.
“We see many possibilities to use drones” to save time to map and detect landmines in a given area, De Vries said.
The key phase would be to carry out field tests in Afghanistan, which the brothers hope to finance by crowd-funding.
If all goes well, the pair believe the drone can be made for as little as 1,000 euros (US$1,100) each.
Other opinions are guarded.
One of them is the Halo Trust, the world’s largest humanitarian mine-clearing organization.
It said that despite having carried out some “small-scale trials with aerial mapping drones,” it did not believe “drones will contribute significantly to the future of mine clearance.”
Drones are of limited use in areas covered with vegetation and in poor weather conditions, the trust said.
And even if the drone did find a landmine “a trained human being will still be required to excavate and destroy it,” the trust said in a statement.
The brothers are using the Kickstarter online crowd-funding platform in the hope of raising 90,000 euros for the final tests.
They want to take it to Afghanistan for testing within the next two months, the first time the brothers would be back in their native country since fleeing the Taliban-ruled Kabul in the late 1990s.
Three years ago a plan to return to Afghanistan to test the mine kafon failed. The “puffball” idea — while praised for its low technology and cheapness — meant the device was at the mercy of the winds and could not cover a minefield systematically to guarantee it was cleared, as humans would.
“The mine kafon invention did a lot to create awareness of landmines,” Massoud said.
“We felt that it was now time to do something even more concrete to destroy landmines,” he said.
Massoud, 32, fled Afghanistan in 1998, followed two years later by Mahmud, 30. After arduous treks through Pakistan and Uzbekistan the brothers made their way to the Netherlands and today hold Dutch citizenship.
Landmines are scattered in 78 countries, and each year kill between 15,000 and 20,000 people and maim countless more, according to UN figures.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was