About Minesweepers

Minesweepers Indoor Competition

Towards a Landmine-free World

In conjunction with the 2019 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2019), this Indoor Version will take place in the beautiful city of Macau, China in November 4-5, 2019.
In this competition, each participating team build/use a tele-operated/autonomous unmanned ground/aerial vehicle to perform the two processes of humanitarian demining: detection and disposal. The robot must be able to search for buried and surface-laid anti-personnel landmines and UXOs.
The position and the type of each detected object are visualized and overlaid on a minefield map. The detected surface landmines have to be safely displaced to a built-in container or to a designated area outside the competition arena.
The robot must be able to navigate through simulated rough terrain in an indoor arena that mimics a real minefield.
It’s a new version of Minesweepers the first international robotic competition on humanitarian demining established in 2012. This competition aims at raising public awareness of the seriousness of landmines and UXOs contamination and fostering robotics research and its applications in the area of humanitarian demining in the world.
Humanitarian demining or civilian-purpose demining or includes performing two main processes, namely, Explosive remnants of war (ERW) reconnaissance and mapping and ERW clearance or disposal. The first stage of the demining procedure aims at accurately detecting and localizing surface-laid and buried landmines and UXOs.
The second stage is to neutralize/deactivate, displace or destroy the detected landmines and UXOs. The success of the disposal process depends mainly on the accurate localization of the ERW. If the landmines are accurately localized, they can be destroyed or deactivated.
The ultimate goal of the Minesweepers competition is to put into practice the strategic mission of IEEE, “…to foster technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity” and to serve as an educational and a research forum to provide efficient, reliable, adaptive and cost-effective solutions for the serious problem of humanitarian demining in many affected countries in the world. Moreover, the applicability of the robotic systems presented in this competition can be extended to a wide range of other applications such as security and surveillance, search and rescue, health monitoring of civil infrastructure and environment monitoring.

We work to be a part of making an impact on the world; to find solutions, implement creative and useful ideas, and encourage youth to take step forward in changing the world to a better one.

Towards a Landmine Free World

Detection and removal of landmines is, at the present time, a serious problem of political, economical, environmental and humanitarian dimensions in many countries over the world.

The simplicity and cost-effectiveness of mines are major factors in explaining the widespread use of mines throughout the numerous countries that are now faced with dealing with landmines & explosive remnants of war (ERW) contamination problem.

These landmines make no distinction between friend or enemy, children or animals.

The civilian-purpose demining or humanitarian demining aims at finding and removing abandoned landmines without any hazard to the environment. While basic landmine detection and neutralizing theologies remain almost the same, landmine technology improved dramatically.

Moreover, the humanitarian demining activities carried-out to remove landmines and unexploded ordnances from the vast contaminated areas are not on the same level of the problem. More efficient ways to detect and locate landmines and UXOs are needed.

This is one of the main objective of Minesweepers competition.

Inspiring Developers and Researchers

One of the main objectives of Minesweepers is to provide real hands-on experience for the competitors to discover the robotics world, explore the new technologies and meet different teams around the world through the competition journey which starts from designing a robot, making technical report, joining the field to compete with many other teams from different cultures and ages, also having educational discussions with professional judges and technical support team.

The journey doesn’t end with winning Minesweepers, it continues with the participants until they can achieve their own goals. That journey aims to one goal which is changing the world into a landmine free one by the teams’ experience which can make the participants from all categories (academia, juniors and industry) capable of being leaders at the different robotics industries to create and implement innovative technological solutions for the benefit of humanity.