MINERATS
Anti-personnel Mine Clearance Robots


This area contains documents describing the Minerats project, an attempt to deploy advanced sensor and robotics technology for the detection and removal of anti-personnel mines.

Moore's Law in the Minefield
Talk by John Walker at the IEEE Asilomar 1995 Microprocessor Workshop describing the Minerats project.
Anti-Personnel Mines: Problems and Solutions
Presentation by John Walker at the Hackers' Conference, 22nd November 1996, providing technical background for a brainstorming session on innovative approaches to humanitarian demining.
ZagrebWorkshop97
On September 29–October 1, 1997 SusDem '97, an international workshop on sustainable humanitarian demining was held in Zagreb, Croatia. Printed proceedings of the conference are available free of charge by E-mail to detec@epfl.ch.
LausanneWorkshop95
Program for a conference held in June, 1995 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland to discuss technologies for mine detection and removal. A group photo of the attendees, human and robotic, is available. Printed proceedings of the conference are out of print and no longer available.
Geneva U.N. Mine Clearance Meeting Report
A report, written by Prof. Jean-Daniel Nicoud of LAMI-EPFL describing the United Nations International Meeting on Mine Clearance, July 5–7, 1995 in Geneva, Switzerland.
Common anti-personnel mines
Pictures and descriptions of frequently-encountered anti-personnel mines, courtesy of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The wide variety of mines is a major obstacle to detecting them.
Pemex Picture Gallery
Various pictures of the prototype Personal Mine Explorer-BE (Pemex-BE) robot developed at the Microprocessors and Interfaces Laboratory (LAMI) at EPFL. Pemex-BE is just one of a wide variety of robots developed at LAMI. The Demining Technology Center: DeTeC at LAMI is developing sensors and sensor fusion software for high-confidence-level detection of buried mines.


by John Walker