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Massoud Hassani
Mine Kafon wind-powered deminer, 2011
The Mine Kafon Wind-Powered Deminer is designed to roll across the ground, detonating land mines in the process. In Qasaba, Afghanistan, Hassani's hometown, leftover mines, remnants of conflicts, often injure or kill civilians. When the deminer blows across a minefield, exploding any ordnance present, it reclaims the space as safe and usable.
At about 155 pounds (or around seventy kilograms), the deminer is approximately the weight of an average human adult. It is constructed modularly: when it detonates a mine, only a few of its 175 bamboo arms are blown off, allowing it to complete multiple detonations before needing repairs. When repairs do become necessary, a GPS chip embedded in the device's core guides the deminer along a safe path out of the field. Components are made from biodegradable materials, so unsalvaged pieces do not further pollute the environment.
The design was inspired by the wind-powered racing toys that Hassani and others from his hometown built as children. Since first developing the deminer during his studies at Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands, Hassani has continued to pursue efficient solutions to the problem of land mines. He field-tests iterations of the Mine Kafon deminer with the support of the Dutch Ministry of Defense and has released a set of freely accessible instructions for creating your own from discarded materials like tires or oil canisters.It's weird how everything looks like the Covid-19 virus after awhile. |