Abstract:
Humanitarian demining is calamity of third world countries. The clearing is ceaseless, more expensive than the spreading, and terrorist return is obtained by weakening of the antagonistic population. The mines are cheapest weapon, built to make horrible injuries, affecting active people, with major falls-off into economic growth.
The disaster is notably cruel in Sri Lanka, with anti-person mines spread in the northeast region. After the ceasefire, the international organizations started the mine sweeping, with poor issues, due to politico-economical motivations in direct bond with wants in the technical effectiveness. The pitiable situation is worsened, as most rich lands are removed from farming exploitation, with increasing of the internally displaced persons.
Now, clearing is engineering duty, and the humanitarian goal comes to be technical challenge. The advanced robotics fulfils clean and reliable tasks, on condition to upgrade sophistication and cost and to loose third-world appropriateness. The challenge is to turn local machines and awareness into effective robotic aids, willingly used by the local people, and to enhance the on-going outcomes. The analysis, mainly, addresses the following points:
- the engaged technologies need to provide special purpose outfits and to involve operators having adapted uniformity;
- the work-flow pre-setting ought to detail the duty-cycles and to establish the standard achievements;
- the planning has to specify the on-process warning/emergency management and the failure protection rules;
- the operators‟ instruction and training shall aim at off-process optimized work-flows to circumvent risky issues;
- the effectiveness comes from organized routine agendas, in conformity with allotted tasks and emergency events.
This is a mix of organizational and technologic demands, calling for responsible commitment of the involved people, so that the local Civil Service is entitled to do the clearing operations, and the all engaged community is solidly concerned.
The winning solution shall look at low-cost robotic outfits, to be obtained with resort to nearby available resources and competences (e.g., drawn on from the local agricultural machinery and know-how), and full account of the cost limits, while aiming at the process effectiveness by the mix of enabling cues, principally deferred to enhancing the regional awareness and the factual dedication.
The paper stresses on fairly unorthodox robots, addressing unmanned effectors facilities joined with intelligent remote-command abilities, not as advanced achievements, rather as cheapest productivity upgrading, assembled from standard farming devices, through the shared know-how and commitment of locally involved operators.
