Syllabus

Description

Humanitarian Demining is the process of detecting, removing and disposing of landmines. Millions of landmines are buried in more than 80 countries resulting in 20,000 civilian victims every year. MIT Design for Demining is a design course that spans the entire product design and development process from identification of needs and idea generation to prototyping and blast testing to manufacture and deployment. Technical, business and customer aspects are addressed. Students learn about demining while they design, develop and deliver devices to aid the demining community. Past students have invented or improved hand tools, protective gear, safety equipment, educational graphics and teaching materials. Some tools designed in previous years are in use worldwide in the thousands. Course work is informed by a class field trip to a U.S. Army base for demining training and guest expert speakers.

Grading

Instructors use the marks obtained by a student and their discretion to determine a final course grade.

Discretionary considerations include attention to personal development, ethical practice, respect for others, active involvement with your work and recognition of design ability not reflected in the assessment marks given out.

Assignments are available in the assignments section.

Intellectual Property Considerations

MIT Policies and Procedures indicate that students own the intellectual property they create while taking MIT courses, provided the work is not developed in the course of or pursuant to a sponsored research or other agreement, not created as a "work-for-hire" by operation of copyright law, and not developed with the significant use of funds or facilities administered by MIT.

In all likelihood, you will own the intellectual property you create in this class. Students only occasionally combine their class work with their research or their employment work. From a legal perspective, you will not be using significant MIT funds or facilities.

Given the service nature of this course, an effective mechanism for providing service is to place final student class work in the public domain. In some cases, it is the only way to provide a community a service.

As the need arises, we will discuss intellectual property plans in further detail for individual projects. In any event, do not hesitate to talk with us if you have any questions regarding this information.

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