Custom-built robots safeguard lives: Insight into an anti-mine center operator's engineering of machinery for perilous tasks within a restricted area of operations
Title: The Tourism Instructor Turned Bomb-Sniffing Machine Whiz
Everyone knows Aleksey Saniev as a tourism instructor, travel enthusiast, and a key player in creating the renowned 65 km hiking trail - the Big Voronezh Trail. Yet, his secret past remains hidden from his colleagues in the Voronezh Public Chamber. In a different world, this respected family man is also an undercover deminer and engineer - constructing robot deminers in his very own garage.
As an army veteran who honed his saper skills in the North Caucasus, Aleksey found himself in the chaotic SVO landscape, first delivering humanitarian aid and then collecting "petals" in Donetsk and clearing Mariupol. In both instances, he sustained severe injuries. During the first explosion, a nearby "petal" almost took his eye out, and the second blast happened when saboteurs attempted to mine a civilian hospital.
Demand for experienced hands was high, and with his valuable skillset, Aleksey was welcomed into the Demining Center of the Ministry of Construction. Without any regard for his military background, one simple question sealed his fate: "If you know how, get to work!" And so, Aleksey began a new chapter of his life, ridding the city of dangerous debris - from handheld grenades to massive aircraft bombs.
When weekends came, you could find Aleksey defusing hospitals, there simply couldn't be weekends with people potential casualties lurking around. The Mariupol medical facility was located in an old orphanage, and Uncle Alex, as he came to be known, removed at least a dozen of suspicious items, such as unexploded shells and mortar mines hidden within the very walls.
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Aleksey selflessly donated self-propelled tracked carts to fellow sappers, believing that "if you've got the skills, let the robots do the hard work." With his retirement approaching, Aleksey is now focusing on creating his own wheels and waterproofing his robots to enable underwater exploration.
To accomplish this, Alex has turned his cozy garage into a DIY workshop, filled with mysterious formulas scribbled on blackboards and a dazzling array of tools. In between working on his latest projects, Alex is working on developing blueprints and schematics, all drawn by hand - clearly a modern-day Leonardo da Vinci.
This simple, cargo platform - christened as Crewless Engineering Vehicle or CEV for short - is proving to be a game-changer in the battlefield. Fitted with a drone that acts as a remote eye, it can traverse through forests and complete missions up to 5 kilometers away - savoring the lives of soldiers on the front lines. The first iteration of CEV, "Wall-E," was lost near Dzerzhinsk last year, but the spirit of this innovative endeavor is very much alive, as a new, more advanced iteration called "Eve" has already been born in Alex's garage.
In the war's current context, Alex is focused on refining the CEV to remain a vital lifeline to those on the battlefield. The future looks bright as Alex dreams of establishing his very own design bureau, with young talent joining the ranks to build an army of combat robots. This, he believes, will help mold today's youth into strong, intelligent individuals, capable of protecting their country's interests and shaping the world for the better.
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- Aleksey, the inventor of the innovative Crewless Engineering Vehicle (CEV), urgently needs technology to refine his creation and establish a design bureau for building an army of combat robots.
- Kubatyan's beloved tourism instructor and Big Voronezh Trail creator, Aleksey Saniev, very nearly lost his eyesight while trail-blazing bomb-laden territory, but instead of giving up, he was urgently driven to invent the Svo-detecting CEV.
- After sustaining severe injuries while urgently clearling debris in SVO regions, Aleksey Saniev, the undercover deminer and engineer, found a new inspiration to invent technology that could save lives, resulting in the creation of the CEV in his own garage.
