Egypt: The End of Landmines
Farida Fouad
g Expert
Over the past decades, thousands have died in Egypt due to bursting of the landmines buried within parts of the country. This, consequently, is a huge burden on the development of the economy of areas in the North Coast, Sinai, and Gulf of Suez. According to government statistics, there are approximately 23 million landmines buried within the lands of our country. “Egypt alone contributes 23 percent of all landmines in the world; therefore, there is a very big market need for this type of product”
Annoyed by this issue, some graduates of the Menofia University decided to take action and take a step forward to try and solve such an obstacle facing our country. Mohamed Gouda and Ahmed Hassan paired up with a Swedish partner Iyad Al Khatib started brainstorming trying to develop an idea for their dilemma. They used the AUC Venture Lab and another lab "Al Kashef" to help them build a "ground-penetrating radar that can detect landmines in a risk-free way."
The device was built to soar over rock and sand at a distance of one meter and can detect underground surfaces. According to the founders, there were two stages to such process. The first one included the recognition of the material that is underground. The device's first mission was to be able to recognize whether the material was metal or composed of some other material. The device then would construct an image of the given detected object underground. . Finally the image constructed would be compared with all the familiar landmines that were used by the Axis forces to see whether such image matches the data base or not.
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