Kyiv-based company BeesAgainstMines is working on modular drone-based platforms designed to clean up territories from the consequences of war. dev.ua spoke with the startup’s CEO Oleksandr Plakhtur and learned more about how the BeesAgainstMines artificial intelligence model and SWARM system work.
Kyiv-based company BeesAgainstMines is working on modular drone-based platforms designed to clean up territories from the consequences of war. dev.ua spoke with the startup’s CEO Oleksandr Plakhtur and learned more about how the BeesAgainstMines artificial intelligence model and SWARM system work.
According to Oleksandr, the company’s drones gradually perform operations such as surface preparation (the presence of tall plants is an obstacle), search and identification of objects (mines, shells, bodies, other objects — metal, wooden, plastic), neutralization of identified mines and shells, and cleaning up the remains.
«Our system allows us to neutralize and collect everything that was installed using standard methods and indicate to sappers the coordinates of problem areas, for example, shells that we cannot remove with drones. Currently, the stages of testing the system’s operation in different soil conditions are underway», — says the head of BeesAgainstMines.
The core team of the startup consists of people. It includes: an active sapper, an engineer, a programmer, a financial director, a project manager, and a marketing manager. «Since the solution uses CNC (numerical control) and data marking technologies, we involve specialists as needed,» explains Plyakhtur.
He said that BeesAgainstMines has developed its own AI model, the main feature of which is that it simulates the work of a sapper and is trained to make decisions the way he does. Data collection is the hardest part, because the data is collected on «empty real objects», in different types of soils, in different temperature and weather conditions.
Oleksandr Plakhtur says that since cleaning the territory consists of a sequence of certain actions, the SWARM system is «the work of drones in a single information environment.» Search modules provide information about identified objects, their coordinates, depth of occurrence and position in space, and this information is distributed to the modules for destruction. After successful destruction, the information is provided to the cleaning drones, which carry out excavation and removal of the remains to a certain area.
The head of BeesAgainstMines also explained where the startup’s name came from. According to him, the team was investigating the possibility of using trained bees, rats, mice, and pigs to detect explosives.
«The main problem is that when a projectile explodes, a field with varying degrees of explosion is formed around it, and the surface, for example, of plastic mines, may not have any traces of explosives. Animals clearly determine the places of explosions of projectiles and are terrible at determining active mines. The bees in the name come from the sound made by drones, which is somewhat similar to the sound of bees,» explained Plakhtur.
According to the company’s CEO, developing such technology costs a lot, and the Ukrainian Startup Fund provided a significant impetus for its creation.
BeesAgainstMines does not plan to sell the product itself, but instead will provide site cleanup services. It is currently undergoing testing to begin a pilot project.
«We are currently preparing a solution for a pilot project with one client, and the possibility of further cooperation will depend on the success of the pilot project», — says Oleksandr Plyakhtur.
He said that BeesAgainstMines actively cooperates with humanitarian organizations, and noted that the product is currently not very suitable for military use, because «drones are big and slow.» For now, the startup is focused on humanitarian clearance of territories.
«Currently, the solution is being prepared mainly for cleaning agricultural areas, but it allows cleaning open areas where heavy drones can fly», — explains the startup’s CEO.
According to him, scalability is built into the startup’s system. Different areas and levels of pollution require rapid reallocation of resources and the number of systems, and using SWARM allows for effective load balancing.
«The plans for the coming years are to clean up as much of the dangerous debris brought by the war as possible and make the territories suitable for growing crops», — emphasized Oleksandr Plyakhtur.
