Demine Robotics, a social enterprise using robots to defuse landmines in Cambodia, is opening their first design engineering office in Phnom Penh, Cambodia starting 1 March 2018. The start-up’s office will be based in the new Social Innovation Lab at the National University of Management (NUM), with partnership from Smart Axiata. The Social Innovation Lab at NUM is part of EU funded South-East Asian Social Innovation Network (SEASIN).
Born in Cambodia, Richard Yim (the founder of Demine Robotics) spent the first 13 years of his life being cautioned, as all Cambodian children are, about where he could and could not play, and seeing on every street people who were maimed to one degree or another. Cambodia has the unfortunate distinction of being one of the most heavily land-mined countries in the world – with an estimated 4 to 6 million land mines in the country.
Worldwide, land mines are a significant issue. The United Nations estimates that there are 4,000 to 6,000 landmine related deaths each year. Land mines also have an economic effect on mined countries – in Cambodia, for instance, fertile land cannot be farmed due to the presence of land mines.
Demine Robotics has developed and patented a new method of removing landmines using robotics technology. The founders, Richard Yim and Christian Lee studied Engineering at the University of Waterloo in Canada where they launched the startup as part of the Accelerator Program.
Read more about Demine Robotics here:
– Demine Robotics
– Demining company prepares for field tests, The Canadian Trade Commissioner Service
– Canadian engineer designs a machine to rid the world of landmines, The Huffington Post Canada
– Mine-craft: Can technology take us towards a mine-free world?, Social Space
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