This article was taken from the February 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
This decorative-looking ball can save lives in a war zone -- by rolling over mines and detonating them. Its designer, Massoud Hassani, grew up in war-torn Kabul, Afghanistan, where death from live land mines was a daily occurrence. "We used to make and play with little wind-propelled paper balls in the desert outside my home," says Hassani, 29. With these toys in mind, he created the Mine Kafon ("Kafon" means "explosion" in Pashto) while studying at the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2011, and has been testing it in Morocco with the Dutch ministry of defence over the last 12 months.
The 2-metre-wide sphere is made from nearly 200 radiating bamboo spokes, each one ending in a plastic foot. "Each foot has an air-suspension spring which imitates the motion of a human foot, thus setting off the land mines," Hassani says. Weighing 90kg, it can still be propelled by a strong gust of wind, and is heavy enough to trigger the mines. At its core is a GPS chip that maps the areas it has cleared.
From March, the Mine Kafon will be exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. "But I want to work with companies to build and scale it for use in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Angola," says Hassani. "It's not just a piece of art."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
