MgM Rotar employed all over the world
Innovative MgM demining technology is applied more and more
At the beginning of 1999 MgM was faced with the task of searching the garbage dump of an Angolan town for mines. The problem was that none of the known manual demining technologies could be applied here. Metal detectors were useless because of the high percentage of metal waste, dogs because of the glass splinters. Digging with the prodder was simply too dangerous, the mines could lie among the garbage in any position and be triggered by the deminers unwillingly.
In search for a useful and safe procedure Hendrik Ehlers, one of MgM’s directors and an experienced deminer himself, came across a Dutch company which had developped a hydraulic sifting drum for road construction. Ehlers realized the potential of this method and modified the device in relevant parts in a way which made it applicable for demining AP mines. Sounds simple, but it wasn’t.
A prototype of this sifting drum was fixed to a heavily armoured front-loader and the concept was put to several test under international observation at the realistic conditions of a real minefield. With amazing success!
The US government sponsored the construction of another smaller MgM ROTAR – such was the name of the new demining device – which was applied successfully. (Rotar MK2 in Mozambique)
Now – 4 years later – the technology has been taken over by other organisations and is applied all over the world; MgM-Rotars work today in Afghanistan and in Iraq, in Honduras and of course in the MgM operations in Angola and Mozambique.
By now we have learnt that in many cases an armoured excavator is a much better carrier for the device than a regular front-loader: there is almost no time-consuming maneouvering between the mine-suspicious “unsafe” areas and the place where the sifting takes place, the so-called “clean ground”.
The enormous range of the cantilever allows the excavator to reach both areasThe enormous range of the cantilever allows the excavator to reach both areas(Unidisk-task in Mozambique).
The result was a enormous gain of time and efficiency. Based on this result the so far biggest MgM-ROTAR for demining is being planned as well as an extremely small version (MiniRotar) for remote-controlled special devices for humanitarian demining and clearance of explosives.
One thing is certain: the so-called deminers’ tool-box has been supplemented with a valuable tool, thanks to MgM’s persistent efforts in the field of development over years. The hard everyday job of a demining troup has become much more safe and efficient in many areas. We hope that the ROTAR technology will be applied in as many mine-infested areas all over the world in the next few years and that it will help to prevent those dreadful mine accidents which threaten the lives and the health of deminers and population alike.
MgM has published the development of ROTAR right from the beginning and is encouraging all demining organisations to copy the method free of charge. It is fully on purpose when MgM is putting no restraints on this request by any kind of copy right or patent. The Non-Profit-Innovation of demining technology is one of the principles of the German non-profit organisat
