With over 100 million landmines still buried and armed in places all over the planet today, the problem of landmine contamination is very real, current, and severe. Landmines continue to kill thousands of people each year, and render vast areas of otherwise useful land completely untouchable. Despite numerous ongoing demining efforts around the world, progress towards solving this problem is slow, and there is still plenty of opportunity to help accelerate the work being done.

That's what this year's robotics project aims to do. With a team of roughly 15 students, we plan to design, build, and test a prototype landmine detection robot that can navigate the potentially rough terrain of a minefield and take dust samples to be used for remote explosive scent tracing (REST). If we achieve this, we hope to test the robot in an active minefield, and see it play a small role in solving the world's landmine crisis.