The brothers behind the Mine Kafon project, Massoud and Mahmud Hassani, grew up on the edge of Kabul, in a little town called Qasaba. Living in a house that backed onto an active minefield, they experienced the horrors of landmines from an early age. During the advent of the Afghan Civil War, the brothers moved more than 40 times through different countries, eventually settling in the Netherlands. Having been forced to invent and create their own objects and toys during a childhood so affected by landmines and remnants of war, Massoud then went on to pursue a career in Industrial Design. Inspired from humanitarian beliefs, nature and the wind powered toys the brothers grew up making, the ‘Mine Kafon’, a wind-powered art piece, was realised in 2011 as both a global mine awareness campaign and a legitimate mine-clearing device.

The project won a series of international awards and helped raise awareness for world mine aid through a number of mainstream media outlets. The device has since seen the spotlight of many museums and exhibitions around the world, and has been the centerpiece of many lectures on the topic of landmine clearance. The enthusiastic reception it got inspired the brothers to design an even more comprehensive solution, which hopes to bring the landmine issue to an end once and for all. Following several years of development since, the Mine Kafon Lab team has finalised work on the ‘MKD’ project – an unmanned airbourne demining system.

Take a look below at how Mine Kafon grew as a company during the last couple of years – from its humble beginnings based on wind-powered toy concepts, to the airborne unmanned demining system it offers today.