VR Deminer's Lab Hackathon: KPI students create innovative VR/AR solutions for training deminers
16.10.2025
On October 14, 2025, a one-day hackathon "VR Deminer's Lab" was held in Kyiv, organized by the Center for Humanitarian Demining in conjunction with the Ministry of Economy, Environment and Agriculture of Ukraine, the national platform Demine Ukraine, and the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (KPI).
The event took the form of an ideation design hackathon: participants developed concepts, scenarios of training missions, and UX/UI mockups of VR/AR simulators for training deminers. The format was designed so that participants would focus not on programming, but on creating effective educational solutions that are as close to practical needs as possible.
Eight teams of KPI students created training solutions that meet the professional standard "Operator for the search of explosive ordnance (deminer)" (5169) and can be integrated into the training and certification system. Each team prepared a presentation, mission scenario, interface visualization, and a roadmap from concept to pilot implementation.
The works were evaluated according to several parameters:
compliance with the standard – 25%
educational value – 20%
realism and safety – 15%
creativity – 15%
UX/UI quality – 10%
economic feasibility – 10%
teamwork – 5%
Hackathon results:
🥇 Safe Tomorrow – 1st place, certificate worth 84,000 UAH
🥈 Virtual Deminers – 2nd place, certificate worth 84,000 UAH
🥉 Scan & Save – 3rd place, certificate worth 42,000 UAH
Cash prizes for the three best teams were provided by the manufacturer of explosive model kits, "Univermag Osvytya".
KPI played a special role in the event, whose students demonstrated a high level of technical training and creativity. In addition, this educational institution became a platform for generating ideas that can become the basis of modern educational technologies in the field of humanitarian demining.
“VR and AR technologies open up fast, safe and systematic possibilities for training deminers. They will allow us to train more specialists, increase the efficiency of the process and lay the foundation for a new level of professional training. In addition, VR/AR simulators can involve veterans undergoing rehabilitation or waiting for prosthetics in humanitarian demining, giving them new opportunities for professional realization. During the hackathon, KPI students showed that Ukrainian youth are creating practical innovations for the accelerated training of deminers for work in field conditions,” –
Andriy Datsyuk, Deputy Director of the Humanitarian Demining Center for Digital Development and Innovation, emphasized.
The next step will be the development, testing, and implementation of a VR/AR simulator with the support of international donors. This will allow for the practical application of students' ideas in the process of training deminers.