Kickstarter's official blog on Medium covers the company's policies, design topics, and stories about funded projects.
HN commenters link it for Kickstarter's Public Benefit Corporation status, the Zano failure story, and a profile of the Mine Kafon design.
Similar in visual appearance, difference in design.
https://medium.com/kickstarter/the-explosion-artist-5db66a99ba2f
> Aside from these functional benefits, Mine Kafon has an undeniable aesthetic beauty. The tumbling dandelion-like structure recalls Dutch sculptor Theo Jansen’s Strandbeests, similarly fashioned from repurposed industrial materials and eerily imbued with life by the wind. Hassani’s work even caught the eye of MoMA’s Senior Curator of Design, Paola Antonelli, who included Mine Kafon in the museum’s 2014 Design and Violence show. More exhibitions around the world followed, and the project became something of a viral sensation, with the elegance of the idea — and Hassani’s inspiring story — propelling the pressing issue of landmines through social media and beyond.
> Mine Kafon also garnered attention from the Dutch Ministry of Defense, which evaluated the design’s effectiveness in their test minefields, ultimately determining that the project was not practical for operational use but still valuable as a tool for raising awareness.
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It has some issues with following topological contours and one not getting blown up isn't a "this area is clear" (or even a deterministic "this path through this area is clear"). One getting blown up means it found one mine (possible some more if its durable) ... and then you need to clean up the scrap, but this returns to the "you don't have a positive signal of this area is completely free from mines."
The OP should mention that this isn't the first time the creators have run a campaign. As a frequent reader of r/shittykickstarters, my initial reaction was "Someone ambituous wants someone else's money to produce something that sounds awesome but will probably fail in reality"...but these folks [0] have passed the main litmus test of actually delivering on their previous campaign [1], which means they're much less likely to fuck up like Coolest Cooler or the many other KS projects that amount to nothing, because they have supply-chain experience and realistic expectations.
(some examples of hopeful, non-scamming amateurs going down in flames are Peachy Printer, the $99 3D printer [2], and Zano, the nano drone [3])
[0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1830738289/maslow-cnc-a-500-open-source-4-by-8-foot-cnc-machi
[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/makesmithcnc/makesmith-cnc-the-most-affordable-desktop-cnc-rout
[2] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/117421627/the-peachy-printer-the-first-100-3d-printer-and-sc/posts/1707009
[3] https://medium.com/kickstarter/how-zano-raised-millions-on-kickstarter-and-left-backers-with-nearly-nothing-85c0abe4a6cb#.g8nqtzd7l
Kickstarter also voted itself to become a Public Benefits Corporation [1] so you would hope they were already out in front of ensuring contributor rights are fairly represented in concert with other stakeholders.
[1] https://medium.com/kickstarter/kickstarter-is-a-pbc-heres-what-that-means-and-why-it-matters-d90b2389ea6c