> Any robot capable of doing the neccessary manual digging would be so heavy it 'd certainly trigger the mines
Hm. Could you use light bots to search out and mark the mines, and send in diggers only once the area has been thoroughly inspected? Of course that just makes everything even more complicated...
How much of normal mine clearance is searching vs. removing? Is there any advantage to robots that mark mines for manual removal, or is that already the "easy" part?
> 1) scanner technology that can differentiate between scrap metal and mines, as well as penetrate at least 1-2m into the ground
Forgive me if this is naive, but do mines actually get buried 2m deep? I would think that would be unfeasibly difficult. Or are we thinking of shallower mines that were buried by natural soil movement?
> 2) robots on 2 legs and with 2 arms - basically, humanoid robots. Anything other is only usable on flat fields.
It could conceivably be helpful to use a robot that can cover moderately rugged terrain. You'd still need to use manual methods on the rougher patches, but it might at least reduce the size of the problem.
I realize it's probably unfeasibly expensive no matter what, but it's interesting to think about the problem.
Hm. Could you use light bots to search out and mark the mines, and send in diggers only once the area has been thoroughly inspected? Of course that just makes everything even more complicated...
How much of normal mine clearance is searching vs. removing? Is there any advantage to robots that mark mines for manual removal, or is that already the "easy" part?
> 1) scanner technology that can differentiate between scrap metal and mines, as well as penetrate at least 1-2m into the ground
Forgive me if this is naive, but do mines actually get buried 2m deep? I would think that would be unfeasibly difficult. Or are we thinking of shallower mines that were buried by natural soil movement?
> 2) robots on 2 legs and with 2 arms - basically, humanoid robots. Anything other is only usable on flat fields.
It could conceivably be helpful to use a robot that can cover moderately rugged terrain. You'd still need to use manual methods on the rougher patches, but it might at least reduce the size of the problem.
I realize it's probably unfeasibly expensive no matter what, but it's interesting to think about the problem.