62 In operation | Dropla mine countermeasures The other 95% is marked safe with an 80% confidence index (obviously, that 80% chance is insufficient for declaring such zones safe, but the second phase involving UGVs serves to provide 98% certainty, as will be explained later). “The end result is that we can identify standard landmines with 100% certainty, and even things like plastic bags don’t just get discarded from the AI model because they could easily be improvised explosive devices [IEDs],” Shvaydak says. “It’s well known that plastic bags can contain explosives linked to a cheap accelerometer, such that the vibration of nearby pacing will trigger a spring to push the bag to mid-air, where it will explode shrapnel across a 30 m radius. That’s why the second phase is called ‘confirmation’, because we confirm that we did not miss a potential landmine.” Therefore, while detections of false positives are permissible (as they won’t explode, and will get checked and confirmed as safe afterwards), false negatives (where an area deemed safe actually contains a landmine) cannot be allowed as people could be killed. And, while many different sensors can detect signs of mines in varying ways, no single standalone sensor can guarantee the prevention of false negatives. Aircraft to aircraft As of writing, Dropla has primarily flown using the DJI Matrice 350, having been an inexpensive and easily integrated solution. It was convenient to use during early r&d, particularly in flying preplanned, waypoint-based survey operations in controlled fleet formations in standard patterns over simulated SHAs at its test grounds. “Mission planning and control has always gone smoothly, thanks to the C2 software of our partners, SPH Engineering, in Lithuania, but, of course, we can’t keep using a Chinese solution due to the coming import ban, so we’re also developing our own UAV and positioning system,” Shvaydak says. While the Matrice 350 is a fully-electric, 9.2 kg drone, capable of 55 minutes of flight time on its battery, the upcoming Dropla UAV will feature a hybrid-electric powertrain, enabling 90 minutes of flight with payloads significantly higher than the M350’s 2.7 kg. “Running the engine to recharge batteries mid-flight will produce high vibration, and that’ll be hell on the payload sensors, so a major focus of our UAV engineering is the vibration damping between engine and payload, which, frankly, will have to be at least as sophisticated as the rest of the UAV combined,” Shvaydak says. “But the biggest focus of all is our navigational resilience, and that’ll be optimised using a combination of visual odometry – with a particular camera and Lidar fused to work in combination for pixel manipulation and depth extraction – and the sharing of INS data, facilitated via a mesh network based on STANAGs 5065 and 5066 for tactical data-link communications. That means swarm-based navigation, which will give a sufficient level of certainty, even in GNSS-denied environments. These are well-known, established navigation technologies, so there’s nothing too outlandish about being able to do that.” Price of a mile Once data from the UAVs and their sensors has been fused (via Dropla.Vision), the UGVs can be programmed to sweep the surveyed area in two key ways. The first task required of Dropla’s UGVs is vegetation removal: 95% of professional sappers’ operational time is spent cutting grass with scissors to clear paths for large minesweeping vehicles and their crews to gain access to CHAs. “Professional sappers, like those of Ukraine’s State Transport Special Service [STSS], who had cleared 3600 km2-plus of land as of May 2024, are highly trained individuals, but so arduous is the task of grass clearance that the first thing they asked me to deliver from Dropla was a low-cost and expendable system for automated vegetation removal,” Shvaydak says. Currently, three UGV models are manufactured by Dropla, all costing $12,400-15,500. Its mowing solution (and the first typically deployed) is the Clover-1 UGV, a 350 kg vehicle measuring 2413 x 1310 x 1576 mm with its front mowing attachment, featuring three six-bladed rotors. It is capable of four hours of operation and speeds up to 10 kph, thanks to a 9 bhp diesel February/March 2025 | Uncrewed Systems Technology A range of cameras, magnetic sensors, EM sensors, metal detectors, Lidars and more are used to collect sensor data for narrowing down where potential landmines lie
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