Minesweeping tank-bot shreds land mines, rolling through explosions with ease

Technology is helping de-miners find unexploded land mines in new and cool ways, like the metal detectors augmented with smartphones we learned about this spring. And now, there are mine-chomping tank robots that eat mines for breakfast.

The Digger D-3 is the latest creation of Digger DTR, a Swiss non-governmental organization dedicated to designing mine-clearing devices. It has a spinning tiller of death called a flail, made of tungsten hammers that pound 10 inches into the ground. It also has a rolling tiller that can clear vegetation. The remote-controlled tank was brought to light by IEEE Spectrum’s robotics blog.

The D-3 is fully armored to withstand land mines and ordnance up to 81mm in diameter, Digger says. It has a four-cylinder, 4.5 L John Deere diesel engine, which can crank out 173 hp at 2400 RPM. The remote-controlled robot is as adept at clearing shrubbery as it is at chomping mines, so it’s ideal for minefields with dense vegetation or in mountainous areas, Digger says.


/Popular Science/