The U.S. military already has a kennel-load of bomb-sniffing dogs. But getting those four-legged weapons-hunters ready for war requires a ton of time and patience from a human trainer. No more, the Army hopes. They want an automated system that can prep dogs and rodents to spot bombs. Good call, Pentagon! As they surely learned on the internets, dogs love computers.
In the military's latest round of small business research awards, the Army doled out three contracts to create computerized animal coaches. Their plan is to come up with "a rugged automated trainer system" that would prep "large quantities of animals" to seek out explosives and landmines.
The initiative, Rugged Automated Training System, or, yes, RATS, is the latest in a series of Pentagon-backed ventures to turn furry mammals into mine hunters. Dogs remain the military's best explosives detector -- boasting an 80 percent success rate -- much to the chagrin of top brass who've doled out more than $19 billion for high-tech bomb-detection research since 2004. Rodents, including giant African pouched rats, have sniffed out land mines across Africa and are undergoing military-funded study for their potential to track down mines in warzones.
But for all their explosive sniffing potential, animals -- as anyone who's used a puppy pee pad can attest -- are kinda tricky to train. Right now, dogs typically train with a single human handler for up to two years before being deployed on a detection mission. The pups are conditioned to treat explosive hunting like a game, with balls, treats and human affection acting as the reward. The process is simpler for rats and other rodents, but still relies on a human trainer and hours of Pavlovian conditioning. Plus, the animals require refresher training on an ongoing basis, making it a full-time job just to keep the sniffing squad in top shape.
If RATS is successful, human trainers would be off the hook. Instead, an automated system would run several animals through detection drills, and then submit "detailed data on training status and performance feedback" to human supervisors. The computerized systems would probably operate a lot like the human training process: Animals experience "an involuntary physiological response" to odors they've been trained to recognize. So stimulus like food would be distributed whenever the system detected, via sensors, that an animal had found an explosive. Researchers at the University of Virginia, one of the institutes pursuing the Army's plan, anticipate plopping each animal into an "automated chamber, controlled by custom software." Each animal would be decked out with a "sensor backpack" to relay data on their progress.
The systems could very well train up more animals, more quickly. But it's highly unlikely that RATS could entirely replace every human trainer. For one thing, we kinda doubt those automated chambers are gonna be completely pee-proof.
Photo: Flickr/konszvi
