News & Events

TIRAMISU partners working on Non-Technical Survey have developed a series of geospatial tools, services and guidelines based on satellite remote sensing, aerial photography (from fixed-wing aircrafts, helicopters and multirotor Unmanned Aircraft Systems) and GIS applications. These tools have been developed in accordance with user requirements thanks to actual case studies and they are applicable to a wide range of contexts. They include:

Between the 27th and the 30th of April 2015, the beautiful Croatian city of Biograd will be host to the 12th International Symposium and Equipment Exhibition "Mine Action 2015".

The updated version of the TIRAMISU presentation video can be found here.

There has been a significant decrease in the number of people that have been injured, maimed or killed by antipersonnel mines in 2013, resulting in the lowest ever figures reported by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) since records began. In its 2014 report, prepared by the Landmine Monitor, ICBL recorded 3.308 deaths or injuries caused by mines or Unexploded Ordnance (UXOs), almost a quarter less than the 4.325 recorded in the previous year, despite the recent multiplication of conflicts in some countries in the Middle-East.

An Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) developed in the context of the TIRAMISU project will be used in next year’s Humanitarian Robotics and Automation Technology Challenge (HRATC’15) as the “playing field” on which the competing teams will test their coding and their robotic command skills.

The Bulgarian government said Thursday 2nd of October that 15 people had died in the northwest after explosions the night before tore through a plant that decommissions land mines. Fearing further blasts, the government sent an armored vehicle into the plant Thursday morning, with drones flying overhead to assess the damage.

The TIRAMISU and ICARUS consortia have released a video showcasing their joint contribution to the assessment of the damage caused by the Bosnia-Herzegovina 2014 floods. The mission was deployed at the request of the Belgian First Aid and Support Team (B-FAST), with the purpose of identifying the most appropriate locations for the implementation of relief operations, through the use of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV).

27th of June 2014 - The United States Government has announced its intention to stop producing or purchasing anti-personnel landmines, meaning that existing stockpiles will not be replenished. Explosive Remnants of War (ERWs) and Unexploded Ordnance (UXOs) kill thousands of civilians every year across the globe, even in post-conflict countries that transitioned to peace many years ago.

Efforts to completely eradicate Explosive Remnants of War (ERWs) from Croatia by the end of 2019 will cost an estimated 528 million euros, according to the Croatian Mine Action Centre (CMAC). The organisation’s director, Drazen Jakopec, attended a meeting in Varaždin, north-eastern Croatia on the 3rd of June 2014 in order to discuss the implementation of a three-year Humanitarian Demining Plan.

Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia, as well as parts of Croatia, have been hit by the worst flooding on record following torrential downpours over the last few weeks. The Belgian First Aid and Support Team (B-FAST), one of the ICARUS project partners, has been deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina to assist with relief operations.

The 11th Symposium on Humanitarian Demining took place in Zadar, Croatia, from the 23rd to the 25th of April 2014. The event was attended by participants from 32 different countries and was organised by the Centre for Testing, Development and Training, the Croatian Mine Action Centre and the Office for Mine Action of the Croatian Government. The purpose of the conference is to provide a forum for participants to discover the latest technological developments for demining operations and to discuss the current issues affecting the Mine Action community.

Following two years of filming, a documentary on Humanitarian Demining and Mine Risks was aired on the 4th of April on the Austrian Channel ORF (Österreichischer Rundfunk). The documentary highlights the dangers related to land mines and Unexploded Ordnance (UXOs) that still exist in many nations across the world, and aims to raise awareness of the tasks performed by professional demining personnel as well as the inherent risks associated with mine clearance activities.

Members of the TIRAMISU consortium participated in a roundtable discussion and exhibition on demining activities in Croatia on the 19th of February 2014 at the EP in Brussels. The theme of the event was "Landmines in Croatia - Landmines in the EU, until when?" and was held in an effort to engage policy-makers in Humanitarian Demining strategies for Croatia.

The TIRAMISU project funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) is researching methods and developing technologies to undertake non-technical surveys of suspected hazardous areas, using remote-sensing techniques. Members of the TIRAMISU consortium visited the Svilaja mountain near Peru?a, Croatia on the 4th of May, 2013 aiming to learn about the terrain of the former battlefield and to search for indicators to enable them to assess the extent to which the area remains infested with mines.

Archive image: Simulated mine accident   The Bosnian media has reported that a ten-year old boy was fatally wounded in a marked landmine field in the town of Gracanica in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina, while picking scrap metal. The police have confirmed that the boy was killed and that his father sustained life-threatening injuries from the explosion of the mine. According to the local media, the boy’s family is forced to make a living from collecting scrap iron and selling it.

On November 13th, the Royal Military Academy of Belgium and Vallon GmbH tested the upgraded Teodor UGV fitted with its metal detector module in Meerdaal, Belgium.

TIRAMISU consortium just released the video of the 10th Symposium on Humanitarian Demining that took place in Sibenik, Croatia in April 2013. The video of the event is available here.

TIRAMISU partners participated in the 7th International Workshop on Robotics for Risky Environment. The event took place as part of the biannual St. Petersburgh Innovation Forum. During the two-day event stakeholders from across the globe gathered to discuss new developments in the field of Extreme Robotics.

A team of TIRAMISU partners including representatives from the Pierre Trattori company, the University of Genoa, SnailAid and SpaceTec Partners gathered in Parma (Italy) to test the Locostra wheel developed in the framework of the project.

The new issue of the ‘Journal of ERW and Mine Action’ has dedicated an article to a study of land release processes carried out by Snail Aid –Technology for Development, as part of the TIRAMISU project’s activities. Snail Aid, as the lead partner for the Mine Risk Education element of the TIRAMISU project, conducted a three-month survey of key mine action stakeholders in Angola, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Croatia, Northern Iraq and Tajikistan.

According to the 'International Campaign to Ban Landmines network' over the last few weeks 6,300 people have survived landmine/Explosive Remnants of War (ERW) explosions in Bosnia as well as over 600 people in Senegal. These tragedies are not confined to these two countries. More than 4,200 people, of whom 42% are children, have been falling victim to landmines and ERWs annually in many of the countries affected by war or in post-conflict situations around the world.

The Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology organised a workshop on “Robotic Technologies for Humanitarian Landmine Detection” in the City for Scientific Research and Technology Applications at New Borg El Arab (Alexandria) on 4th of June, 2013.

Ivo Josipovi?, President of the Republic of Croatia, opened the 10th International Symposium on 'Humanitarian Demining 2013 - HUDEM 2013', organised by the Croatian Mine Action Centre and the HCR-Centre for Testing, Development and Training Ltd., a TIRAMISU project partner. 

  After 20 years of civil war, South Sudan seceded from Sudan, becoming the world’s youngest nation – and one still reeling from the fall-out of the fighting. Swaths of the new country remain contaminated with landmines and other explosive remnants of war, causing the land to lie fallow and preventing infrastructure from being built. In 2010 to 2011, in a resurgence of conflict, along the border between Sudan and South Sudan left numerous roads re-mined and closed once again to civilian and humanitarian traffic.

Tiramisu representatives travelled to Cambodia last February to meet the Cambodian Mine Action Center and onther Cambodia Mine Action stakeholder to present Tiramisu Project and discuss about the mines and UXOs situation in the country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula. Cambodia has a huge problem with mines and UXOs being one of the most contaminated country in the world due to recent internal conflicts.

The American website for topical science articles, Science Daily, has published an article on the FP7 project Tiramisu on 10th December 2012. This article mentions the benefits of a training tool which improves the use of hand-held detectors in humanitarian demining and to increase user security and which has been developed by the Centre for Automation and Robotics of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and the Spanish National Research Council in the framework of the Tiramisu project.

The 7th edition of the IARP (International Advanced Robotics Programme) workshop - Robotics for Risky Environment and Extreme Robotics- will be organised, with the support of the Climbing and Walking Robotics Assocation (CLAWAR), in the Russian State Scientific Centre for Robotics and Technical Cybernetics of Saint-Petersburg (Russia) from 1st until 3rd October 2013.

The Belgian Royal Military Academy hosted and co-organised the 5th International Workshop on Human-Friendly Robotics (HFR 2012) on 18th and 19th October 2012. The workshop aimed to bring together actors from the R&D world to exchange their views on the design, control, safety and ethical issues concerning the introduction of robots into daily life.

Six farmers were killed and two others injured when a landmine exploded in Cambodia's northwestern Battambang province. Local police chief Khum Soy said the victims, whose ages ranged from 17 to 56, were "on their way home from the market when they ran over the anti-tank mine" on Sunday evening. Police said the mine is thought to have been planted in the 1980s during fighting between the Cambodian army and Khmer Rouge rebels.

The Institute of Mathematical Machines (IMM), partner of the TIRAMISU project, organised the international workshop on Robotics for Risky Interventions in the Conference Room of the Institute in Warsaw (Poland) on 11th - 13th September 2012. This sixth edition was organised in the framework of activities of the working group of the IMM on Risky Intervention and Surveillance of the Environment (RISE). This working group, running from 2006, is coordinated by the University of Karlsruhe of Germany and the Royal Military Academy of Belgium (RMA), leader of the Tiramisu Project.

Thailand and Cambodia agreed at the second meeting of their Joint Working Group (JWG) in Phnom Penh to jointly remove and disarm landmines around Preah Vihear Temple before deciding about international observers, according to Thai Defence Minister Sukumpol Suwanatat.

HARILAC, Kosovo (AP) — Demining experts have resumed the slow process of clearing Kosovo of the many NATO cluster bombs and Serbian military land mines left behind from the 1998-99 war. Since the conflict ended, the hidden devices have killed 114 people and wounded more than 450.