An 11-year-old middle school student in eastern Muş province, Mert Delibalta has developed a drone that can detect the location of buried explosives.

The student living in the region affected by the damage caused by PKK terrorists, started his project 6 months ago.

With the project, which he completed in such a short time, Delibalta won the 2nd International Mechatronic Robotics Competition of Erciyes University in central Kayseri province.

Delibalta said in an interview with Anadolu Agency that the main aim of the project was to air-detect the explosives planted under bridges and culverts.

Saying that he used an image processing device, a control card, specially designed chassis made of carbon fiber, a camera, motor, software and remote control in his project, Delibalta said "I placed the image processing device on the drone. Then I encoded the elements of gunpowder with the support of java software. The camera connected to the coded image processing device starts to give warning signals immediately when these elements are detected by the detector system, showing where the gunpowder is."

Adding that he has written over 1,100 lines of code, he said the coding process took three months.

Saying that the capabilities of the drone have already been tested, he added "We buried a small amount of gunpowder in a depth of about 1 meter. With the help of live camera footage we tracked the area. When the drone detected the gunpowder, its green light flashed."

Founded in 1978, the PKK has waged a decades-long bloody campaign against Turkey.

The PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S., and the EU, broke the ceasefire unilaterally and resumed its armed campaign in July 2015 after a brief reconciliation period.

Since that time, the PKK has been responsible for the deaths of some 1,200 security personnel and civilians, including women and children, while more than 4,000 security personnel and over 2,000 civilians have been injured.