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May 10, 2011

This iPhone Finds Landmines

Your iPhone can find a lot of stuff: taxis, toilets, cafés, nearby sexual partners. How cute! And pitiable. While you've been scouting the best place to poop, Harvard researchers are working on an app that finds landmines.

Landmines detection is still surprisingly rudimentary: a human being waves a metal detector over the ground, and listens for audible cues that's there's something metal underground. But that poses a lot of problems. There's a lot of metal junk in the ground where stuff is blowing up all the time. Worse, operators have to be able to pick out mines from debris without losing life or limb. They do that by listening to beeps as they make passes trying to figure out what shape that metal thing underground is. It's hard!

Enter PETALS: pattern enhancement tool for assisting land mine sensing. The basic idea is that it allows anyone, even an inexperienced sweeper, to determine if there's a landmine and where it is. The app receives data from a metal detector and creates a visualization of the spatial pattern below ground. It helps reduce judgement calls in determining if something is or isn't a mine, making de-mining easier, safer and faster.


22 comments:

BigSkull said...

O_o This is exist really ?

Aggeron said...

Quite funny actually if it does

Jay said...

so there really is an app for everything. :)

Anonymous said...

cool, I still need a metal detector right?

BigMike said...

Never been a fan of the iphone, but this is awesome.

D22 Zone said...

Awesome post man! Great find! Keep up the good blogging!

Barnezilla said...

I knew my only 3gs was good for something!! + Followed!!!

-E- said...

surely this is a hoax.

Zombie said...

I think if you live in an area that still has active land mines then you probably couldn't own an iPhone anyway.

Intraman said...

finally a useful application for the iPhone

The Radical Chemist said...

As cool as this is, you still need the metal detector, the iPhone can't do it by itself.

Athanasian Complexio said...

Wow! Something that is actually REALLY useful that comes out on the iPhone/iTouch. I wonder if you could use that for buried treasure as well...

By the way, I love SNSD. I haven't heard Mr. Taxi until now, but I love it. Thanks for that too!

BluRayBoy said...

This makes the iphone so much more badass haha

Dorsia said...

Nice iphone technology!!!

m said...

Ahh and just as I thought the iPhone couldn't get any more cooler. I read this. Booyah.

//Love said...

Haha, when will they make this for android?

MRanthrope said...

then we learn that iPhones really ARE landmines. Mind Blown.

duffboi said...

That's prolly saying something, that they went with an iphone for this.

kxxthanxx said...

really?

Thorfan said...

Why dont I have an iphone yet?!

Blogging Skater said...

i dont see how this will be helpful to the average person, lol

CPH said...

I can't tell if this is real, but I believe it.