Nashua's Eleanor Foltan Part Of WPI Landmine Project Team

NASHUA, NH — A Worcester Polytechnic Institute senior from Nashua is one of the students helping to develop an autonomous rover and payload-deploying drone that work together to search for and destroy landmines. Eleanor Foltan, who is majoring in robotics engineering, is part of the multi-year effort to provide a safer and more cost-effective way to remove landmines worldwide.

The project is being carried out as a Major Qualifying Project, a graduation requirement for every WPI student. MQPs are team-based design or research projects in a student's field of study that provide professional-level experience working on real problems and technologies.

Each year, landmines planted during wartime across fields and backyards and around critical water sources kill or maim an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people worldwide — one in five of them children, according to UNICEF. Local citizens, unable to afford massive mine detonating machines, use ineffective and dangerous methods to detect the landmines, from slowly poking the ground around them with long sticks to training large, leashed rats to sniff out explosives.

"Landmines are a huge issue worldwide," said Craig Putnam, senior instructor of computer science at WPI. "They are laid during wars, but long after those conflicts end, the mines continue to kill and injure people. Mines can stay active, and deadly, for up to five decades, so finding and clearing them is critical."

This robotics system being developed at WPI, according to Putnam, could be an effective but more affordable option for land owners, towns and villages.