Lemur Studio Design is the one that invented the wearable mine detectors

Jan 27, 2014 09:40 GMT  ·  By

Colombia has a major landmine problem, ranking second after Afghanistan with over 10,000 casualties since 1990, 2,000 of whom were fatalities. Bogota-based Lemur Studio Design decided that it was time someone did something about it.

Granted, the government has been doing all it can to mitigate the situation, but it hasn't been able to really curb the activities of anti-government rebel groups.

Said rebels have been strewing antipersonnel and antivehicle mines along roads and foot trails, and even near houses, on the land belonging to indigenous communities, and even in rural areas, around schools, etc. Not even national parks are safe.

It doesn't help that drug gangs use mines to protect their coca farms from intruders.

So yes, there is a significant chance of people getting injured or killed by a mine.

Lemur Studio Design is trying to help fight against this threat in its own way. And that way consists of giving your shoes the ability to detect mines.

We're not talking about new pairs of shoes either, but about insoles that do it instead. Called SaveOneLife, they are wearable mine detectors that fit in a shoe and tell you if you're getting close to a site of impending exploding death.

Lemur Studio Design submitted the idea to the World Design Impact Prize 2013-2014 competition. Ivan Perez is the inventor, and he published it under project leader Lorena Cardenas.

SaveOneLife isn't a solution to the problem, but at least it will reduce the danger from antipersonnel mines. It will take years to actually clear all the minefields, and that's not counting the aforementioned groups placing more.

How does the insole work? It is made of a conductive material and has a planar coil printed on it, which produces an electromagnetic field. Said field detects metal and will warn you of a mine when you step within 2 meters / 6.5 feet of one. Not a bad implementation of nanotechnology, if we do say so ourselves.

A microprocessor, also embedded in the sole, then uses a radio transmitter to send a signal to a wrist-mounted readout that sounds an alarm and displays the location of the mine on a small screen.

Photo Gallery (2 Images)

SaveOneLife insole use
SaveOneLife insole active
Open gallery