UW engineering grads innovate landmine removal
Posted Apr 7, 2019 11:30:00 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Landmine removal will never be the same with the help from a group of engineers who studied at the University of Waterloo.
CEO Richard Yim, a former UW student, says his company Demine Robotics can remove mines from the ground faster than any person can, and more safely too.
Yim says he lost an aunt to a landmine when he was young and that, in part, gave him the motivation to solve this problem.
“The current system for mine excavation is a wide range between 15 to 30 minutes depending on the conditions,” says Yim, “For our machine all of our tests we've done — none of it ever goes beyond 5-minutes”.
Their robot “Jevit” excavates the earth and holds the explosive, eliminating the need for a person to dig it up; the most dangerous task in defusing mines.
“I moved to Canada when I was 15 and for the first time when we went hiking there was something I'd never experienced before — the freedom to walk … It was a liberating feeling I want to give to young kids,” said Yim.
Right now, Demine Robotics is using Kickstarter to crowd fund building a second machine to start removing mines in Cambodia.
