The Jevit: home-grown Cambodian demining robot saves time and limbs (video)

[CEOCambodiaNews]

The Jevit: home-grown Cambodian demining robot saves time and limbs (video)
By Justhine De Guzman Uy on December 26, 2019


Necessity is often said to be the mother of invention and no truer is it the case than for Khmer-Canadian mechanical engineering graduate Richard Yim.

With memories of children in his home country too scared to venture off defined paths lest they be killed by landmines burned into his memory, the 25-year-old has developed a safer method of dealing with the scourge left behind from almost three decades of war from the 1960s to late 1998.

Called a Jevit (Khmer: “life”), the remote control, tracked, robotic device safely deals with the most dangerous part of land-mine clearance, the excavation and removal to a location where they can be safely detonated.

Costing between $50,000 and $100,000 each, the latest revision of the Jevit can be remotely controlled from a distance, further increasing the level of safety for deminers.

A graduate from the University of Waterloo, Canada, Mr Yim emigrated from Cambodia with his parents when he was 13-years-old and still recalls his surprise at seeing children in his adopted homeland running freely through parks and fields.

Cambodia landmine deaths up on 2018
It is estimated that up to six million landmines remain in the wild in Cambodia, with a report by the Cambodian Mine Action Authority (CMAA) putting the number of deaths in the Kingdom in the first 10-months of the year at 11, with a further 60 others either injured or having limbs amputated. The figures are a 37 per cent and 42 per cent increase respectively over the same period in 2018 when eight people were killed and 42 injured or maimed.
https://aecnewstoday.com/2019/the-jevit ... and-limbs/