Russia has created the Shmel MGR-4 humanitarian demining vehicle. The Shmel, developed at the Kovrov Electromechanical Plant and VNI Signal as part of Rostec's High-Precision Systems holding, is based on the Russian Ant-1000 loader, also known as Muravey.
The Shmel is unmanned and controlled by an operator who walks nearby. The demining vehicle crawls through territory where battles have taken place or where mines may have been deliberately planted, at a working speed of one kilometer per hour.
Neutralization occurs thanks to special chains with impact tips. The width of the swath left behind by the Shmel is 2.2 meters, and the depth of the removed soil layer is more than 150 millimeters.
The vehicle can withstand 200g of TNT in the event of an explosion, i.e., an anti-personnel mine. Anti-tank mines already significantly damage the Shmel MGR-4, but the state corporation notes that this equipment is not very expensive for mass production. According to rough estimates, Russia now needs several thousand of these machines.