This company profile is a part of The Air Current’s Special Report on the Ukrainian drone industry, which is available here.
Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the founding members of Ailand Systems were developing world-class software like SkyBox, a tool used to edit virtual reality content. According to CEO Dmytro Titov, “it was pretty much related to physics, simulations, 3D linear algebra” — all disciplines that are central to robotics as well. That served the team well when they pivoted to developing landmine detection drones, which they did after Titov joined the war effort as a sapper, a combat engineer responsible for clearing minefields, in 2022.
Russia has used landmines extensively in Ukraine, contaminating vast swaths of the country, even in areas close to Kyiv. Ailand Systems’ drone incorporates both a camera for detecting drones on the surface of the ground and metal detectors for subsurface detection. Its operating software allows users to define each mission on a map, after which the drone will perform its flight autonomously. The software is fully tailored for landmine detection use cases and will automatically identify landmines or suspicious objects, pinpoint their locations on a map and generate standardized PDF reports.
A unique feature of Ailand Systems’ drone is that it spins while flying in order to cover a wide area in a single pass with high redundancy and accuracy. As Titov explained, keeping the drone moving in a forward direction while spinning is not a trivial problem, and required solving various technical challenges related to navigation and motor management, among others. For visual detection the drone flies at a height of around 20 feet over the ground, while for metal detection it flies as close as eight inches to the ground in order to detect landmines with low metal content.
Ailand Systems’ drone is useful for both preliminary surveys of suspected contaminated areas and for quality control after clearing activities. The company is developing its drone first for purposes of humanitarian demining, meaning in areas that are not active combat zones. This has allowed the team to focus on iterating the basic product before tackling challenges associated with electronic warfare (EW). However, it plans to develop a version of its drone for military demining in combat zones, which will be more portable and resistant to EW.
Ailand Systems has also been working to make advancements in subsurface detection by characterizing the signatures of different types of metals in order to reliably classify buried landmines. Titov said the company can already do this for larger landmines, and is aiming to do so for mines like the PMN-2, a circular, plastic-cased landmine that has been used by Russia in Ukraine. “If we are able to solve it for smaller objects like the PMN-2 anti-personnel mine, that will be a game changer,” he said.
“Defense is not always about killing the enemy,” Titov stressed. “It’s also about protecting people, and literally in our case, each land mine that we detect is someone’s life saved.”
Write to Elan Head at elan@theaircurrent.com
