Low-Cost Detection of Obstructed Non-Metallic Landmines

Sokil Engineering/Global, 2024–25

Liaison(s): Ivan Dudiak ’26, Xander Fries ’24, Christopher Cotner ’13
Advisor(s): Jason Gallicchio
Students(s): Jason Bowman (TL-F), Alina Scholz (TL-S), Eliza Barnett, Nestor Mandujano, Kala Romanowski (S), Will Sedo (F), Andrew Williams (F), Simone Yang (S)

Sokil is a humanitarian demining start-up founded by Harvey Mudd students Ivan Dudiak ’26 and Xander Fries ’24, who developed a low-cost magnetometry-drone system to detect ferrous-cased mines deployed in Ukraine. Sokil wishes to expand its demining capabilities to include plastic-cased mines obstructed by vegetation. The Sokil Clinic team developed drone-based methods capable of detecting non-ferrous mines, conducted testing on RADAR, LiDAR and multispectral imaging systems, and integrated a final LiDAR sensor system to achieve this goal.