Unexploded mines from various conflicts – some the deadly legacy from wars fought and finished decades ago – still maim and kill many people each year. The wind powered Mine Kafon could help reduce the toll.
Inventor Massoud Hassani’s fascination with wind power dates back to his childhood in Afghanistan, when he would make miniature models to be blown by the wind – but when those models ended up in a minefield nearby, he could not retrieve them.
“There are 30 million land mines in Afghanistan and 26 million people, so that’s more mines than people,” Mr. Hassani says on his blog.
More than two decades later, Mr. Hassani continues to tinker with harnessing the power of the wind, with view to using wind energy to clear the minefields that thwarted his play and injured or killed some of his friends.
The Mine Kafon looks like a dandelion seed ball and is constructed from from bamboo and biodegradable plastics. A light breeze blows the Mine Kafon through hazardous areas, detonating any unexploded ordnance in its path.
“It has also a GPS chip integrated in it. So you can follow its steps on the website. You can see were it went, where are they safest paths to walk on and how many land mines are destroyed on that area.”
In regard to cost, the Mine Kafon is a much cheaper way to clear a minefield compared to manual mine deactivation – €30 a mine compared to around €750.
Field testing performed by Holland’s defense forces to date has been favourable and Mr. Hassani is continuing to refine the design.
The Mine Kafon recently received a nomination for the UK’s Design Museum’s 2012 Designs of the Year award. Aside from the attention generated by his invention, Mr. Hassani has already succeeded in greatly increasing awareness of the scale of the problem of unexploded mines around the world.
