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Mine Kafon Drone: An Unmanned Airborne Demining System

Project description

A drone to clear minefields

Active landmines spread death and fear worldwide targeting mainly civilians, mostly women and children. It is estimated that 10 persons are killed every day by one of more than 100 million active mines found in more than 60 countries. Demining remains indispensable for the security of populations in belligerent or post-belligerent areas. However, existing methods based on manual technics or the employment of animals are costly, dangerous and slow limiting demining process efficacity. The EU-funded MKD project proposes a new system of landmine detection based on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The Mine Kafon Drone system is a safe, reliable, efficient, fast and cheap solution. It maps and scan entire areas to find the mines and then places a small detonator on every detected mine.

Objective

"There are more than 100 million active landmines throughout the world. These explosive devices not only kill 10 innocent civilians every day, but they breed fear and helplessness in the minds of millions of people around the world. Speaking about the landmine issue, Paul McCartney of The Beatles said: ""When a war is over I think it's a cowardly thing to leave the war behind you in minefields that hit women and children and the most vulnerable. Imagine the war is finished and you go to work and there are snipers shooting at you. Imagine taking your kids to the beach and you find that the beach is blowing up beneath you. Like there's nowhere safe.""

Using current technologies, detecting and clearing all landmines across the entire world would not be accomplished within our lifetime. These established processes, such as manual or animal-based discovery, are slow, dangerous and expensive. These drawbacks often mean that no demining efforts are even started in the first place.

Massoud and Mahmud Hassani, the founders of Mine Kafon, grew up on the edge of Kabul, in Afghanistan. They experienced the horrors of landmines from an early age. These experiences fueled the brothers to found Hassani Design BV and develop the Mine Kafon Drone (MKD) system. Using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the MKD offers a disruptive solution to landmine detection, providing a reliable and safe system that maps entire areas and scans them centimetre by centimere. Moreover, it does so faster, cheaper and more efficient than current technologies, without putting any human or animal life at risk.

The following proposal explores MKD's potential by examining its technical feasibility (problem-solution fit) and its commercial feasibility (product-market fit). With an increasing amount of money allocated for humanitarian demining, and with the drone market undergoing an exponential rise, the time to solve this long overdue problem is now. Help us make the world a safer, more hopeful place!"

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) H2020-EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020

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Coordinator

HASSANI DESIGN BV
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 50 000,00
Address
PROFESSOR MOSERSTRAAT 42 A ATELIER 0 1
6224BL MAASTRICHT
Netherlands

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SME

The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.

Yes
Region
Zuid-Nederland Limburg (NL) Zuid-Limburg
Activity type
Private for-profit entities (excluding Higher or Secondary Education Establishments)
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 71 429,00
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