Good idea, but it's sort of specific to deserts unfortunately. If only there was something like this for the rain forest.

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The duration of this video has been updated from unknown to 3:10 - length declared by blutruth.

What about the time honored tradition of taking a machine gun and spraying the ground?

That is what all the action movies have taught me.

*engineering

Adding video to channels (Engineering) - requested by brycewi19.

like solar powered landmine boas?

>> ^bmacs27:

Good idea, but it's sort of specific to deserts unfortunately. If only there was something like this for the rain forest.

Terrible idea. It's not systematic enough to clear any given area with certainty, and people may think of zones where these have been operating as 'clear' instead of as potential landmine areas. I think this invention has a great potential to increase the number of accidental landmine detonations, lost limbs and deaths.

Maybe it will explode a few, but when some of it's 'legs' get blown off it stops moving. Does someone go out there, risking his life and limbs in what is now a known minefield to fix it, or do you just leave it there? Because they may seem cheap, but 1 whirlydoohickey blown up per 1 landmine disarmed is hardly 'cheap', when some landmines cost under a dollar, and they may be spread out in the thousands in a given area.

Gotta agree with @Drachen_Jager .

Cute idea the internet is going to love, but not really practical. Imagine deploying just a hundred of these. Each one moving randomly by wind and bounce... appearing to cover 4-5 feet width but only actually covering the width of contact with the surface, then dying in a large awkward pile.

You can't send any new ones because the old ones now block the way, and you can't go get them because you can't be sure where they rolled and where they didn't.

My suggestion would be to equipe each one of them with a GPS tracker and record all of their movements.

In other words, make them smarter. Like those iRobot vacum cleaner...

A lot of misconceptions here:
>> ^Drachen_Jager:

and people may think of zones where these have been operating as 'clear' instead of as potential landmine areas. I think this invention has a great potential to increase the number of accidental landmine detonations, lost limbs and deaths.
Generally, people don't whimsically choose to walk through an area that is covered in land mines. Most Westerners tend to discount the power of local knowledge, and to assume that everyone else in the world is just running around from unknown place to unknown place like we do. Fact is, in places like Afghanistan, the people are hyper-aware of the local situation, particularly when it relates to their personal security and they tend to stay in a small geographical area (no weekend trips to the lake or across country to see Grandma). Landmine deaths occur most often in places that are not marked as dangerous and alongside roads (which tend to be the only path between one location and another.
>> ^Drachen_Jager:

Maybe it will explode a few, but when some of it's 'legs' get blown off it stops moving. Does someone go out there, risking his life and limbs in what is now a known minefield to fix it, or do you just leave it there?

Ummm.... how do you think landmines are removed now? With hi-tech robots and a smartphone? Plenty of lives and limbs at risk in this world cleaning up the messes of violent conflict.
>> ^Drachen_Jager:

Because they may seem cheap, but 1 whirlydoohickey blown up per 1 landmine disarmed is hardly 'cheap', when some landmines cost under a dollar, and they may be spread out in the thousands in a given area.

IF the current cost is §1200 per landmine removal, then, yes, §40 per landmine is cheap.

@aaronfr

Yeah, I think I have some idea how to clear landmines. I was the only one in my mine warfare class to spot the anti-lift device the instructors had placed next to one of the mines in the test. Yes, there is some danger to it, but the thing about clearing landmines that way, is that when you're done, the area is 99% certain to be clear.

I lived in a heavily mined area for six months, so I think I know how aware people are in those situations. However, I don't expect a five year old kid to have that same discipline, and quelle surprise, most of those who are injured or killed by old minefields are children. I don't think your point here is relevant.

When these things are done rolling around the desert, what is the certainty that desert is clear? If they don't clear spaces so they're actually safe, what's the point? Randomly detonate a few mines?

There's a reason it's expensive to clear mines properly, and comparing these things to proper mine clearance, and then comparing the pricetag is laughable.

I do agree with you on one thing, there are a lot of misconceptions here, and they seem to all be on your side of the conversation.

Seems like it might be a cool way to at least thin out landmines so there was somewhat less risk to people that happen to wander into the minefield. If you want to reclaim the land though I think you have to do a systematic sweep, and I can't really see how you'd reduce the expenditure on that.

>> ^Drachen_Jager:

@aaronfr
I lived in a heavily mined area for six months, so I think I know how aware people are in those situations. However, I don't expect a five year old kid to have that same discipline, and quelle surprise, most of those who are injured or killed by old minefields are children. I don't think your point here is relevant.
When these things are done rolling around the desert, what is the certainty that desert is clear? If they don't clear spaces so they're actually safe, what's the point? Randomly detonate a few mines?
There's a reason it's expensive to clear mines properly, and comparing these things to proper mine clearance, and then comparing the pricetag is laughable.

I agree with you in part, but I think the strong form of your argument is a bit much. Certainly randomly detonating a few mines is helpful. If you can send some arbitrarily large number of these things (30 per mine you would have cleared in a sweep) rolling over the desert until you are ultimately detonating very few mines then it is also substantially less likely that a wayward 5 y.o. is going to stumble on one. It doesn't seem like an all or none proposition. I agree, before an area can be designated clear it should be properly swept. However, properly clearing the field is probably too expensive to be feasible. At least reducing the danger could save lives when those kids that don't know any better happen to wander after a stray ball in the still potentially dangerous mine field. Also, the number of mines that need to be safely disarmed could be reduced.

>> ^Fred_Chopin:

My suggestion would be to equipe each one of them with a GPS tracker and record all of their movements.
In other words, make them smarter. Like those iRobot vacum cleaner...

Thereby adding to the expense...

@Drachen_Jager

Do you think this concept could be adapted to be useful? Perhaps if it was a wide cylinder instead of a sphere it could sweep, for example, a 3 meter stripe instead of just a meandering deer trail.

The only real solution is a MASSIVE MASSIVE vehicle... certainly not "Bagger-288" MASSIVE, but MASSIVE. If a landmine does more than make a THUMP! noise... the vehicle needs to be more massive and sturdy. Then just plow the place up with it.

In WW II they had Sherman tanks with a motorized cylinder sticking over the front on two booms, on the cylinder were welded dozens of chains so it would thump the ground as the tank rolled forward, hopefully detonating any mines before the vehicle got there.

Now they do this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eeaou2L2sI

None of it is considered 'cleared' it's just as good as you can get it if you have to travel through that zone. The only way to actually clear a minefield is the very slow and tedious approach.

That's why there have been so many pushes to restrict mine warfare in the past twenty years or so. Once they're out there it's really difficult to get them back safely.

Ineffective != Terrible

If it costs 1200 Euros (on average) to clear one mine, releasing 24 of these things to detonate ONE mine is still cheaper than other option. If one of these things detonates one landmine, perhaps one seven-year-old gets to keep her leg. Money well spent. Until the local population can afford Million-dollar landmine-clearing tanks these can make a small difference for relatively modest costs.

You are correct that the whirlygigs are more expensive than many landmines. Mines are cheap. Getting to the root of the problem and banning use and production of landmines is a greater issue.

This video may help to *promote attention to an ongoing global problem. Presently, Russia, the United States, Israel, India and Pakistan have still not signed up to the the Ottawa Treaty. A further issue is that many manufacturers of munitions, including mines, are heavily invested in by stock-brokers and pension funds. The BC Investment Management Corporation, for example, which manages investments for teachers' and public servants' pensions plans has in the past had as much as "$4.6 billion worth of stock in 251 corporations producing war materiel." There is money in war. People get paid to build landmines.

>> ^Drachen_Jager:

Terrible idea. It's not systematic enough to clear any given area with certainty, and people may think of zones where these have been operating as 'clear' instead of as potential landmine areas. I think this invention has a great potential to increase the number of accidental landmine detonations, lost limbs and deaths.
Maybe it will explode a few, but when some of it's 'legs' get blown off it stops moving. Does someone go out there, risking his life and limbs in what is now a known minefield to fix it, or do you just leave it there? Because they may seem cheap, but 1 whirlydoohickey blown up per 1 landmine disarmed is hardly 'cheap', when some landmines cost under a dollar, and they may be spread out in the thousands in a given area.

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Monday, November 19th, 2012 8:10am PST - promote requested by notarobot.

@Drachen_Jager thanks for the expertise you've brought to this discussion. Somehow chemical weapons have been outlawed by international law, why haven't landmines been as well? It should be a war-crime.

Related

@notarobot"If it costs 1200 Euros (on average) to clear one mine, releasing 24 of these things to detonate ONE mine is still cheaper than other option."

Your math is based on some flawed assumptions. These things might detonate some landmines, that's it, and that's all. Mine clearance is about making safe zones where people can walk again with relative assurance that it's clear of mines.

Apples and oranges, but your apples are rotten, because they simply don't provide much practical use. Maybe it's possible one of these things might save a limb or a life, but as I pointed out earlier, it's equally possible they could cost a limb or a life. Without a dedicated research project nobody will ever know for sure whether these things effectively reduce the number of landmine related injuries.

Also, regarding the cost of mine clearance (well below your 1,200 euro spitball) http://www.un.org/cyberschoolbus/banmines/units/unit1c.asp I'll give the full quote because there are other sobering statistics there.

"A landmine that brings a vendor $3 in revenue, costs the international community between $300 and $1,000 to clear. At a minimum, the 110 million landmines currently buried worldwide will cost approximately $33 billion for clearance alone. In 1994, roughly 100,000 landmines were cleared. However, in that same period 2 million more landmines were laid, leaving the international community with an annual “de-mining deficit” of some 1.9 million mines, adding another $1.4 billion to the cost of clearing the world's landmines."

By the way, one of the big reasons for the wide range in clearance costs is density of the minefield, it takes almost as much work to clear one square metre of space without mines at all as it does to clear one square metre of space with a mine in it, so these doohickys will do little to bring down the cost of clearance in that regard.

I wonder if aerial imaging is an option.

If scientists can predict the count, mass and orbit shapes of planets as they circle a distant star purely through slight shimmers in a blurry image. Surely there'd be an anomaly in some level of the visual spectrum where aerial imaging could detect a difference.

I think some parts of the EM spectrum would go right through the dirt and be reflected off of a metal or plastic landmine. So flying over with a helicopter with a scanner and stitching together the panorama with the right software and GPS tagging could work.

Yea, if it's not 100% effective then it is completely pointless and a waste of time. Surely best not to do anything at all, because in the meantime the most comprehensive solution is too expensive.

Might be a drop in the ocean, but at least it's something.