Dogs Guided Remotely By Stealth System
Auburn University has created a system to guide detection dogs remotely.
Jan. 22, 2011— -- Trained dogs are smart enough to find bombs, drugs, people, and the safest way to cross the street -- but only with a capable handler nearby. Now a new system developed at Auburn University could turn canines into remotely guided "super dogs" that can take on risky tasks.
"With our system you don't have to be in eyesight, versus human guides that do have to be within sight," said David M. Bevly, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Auburn University who worked on the research.
In the past, remote guidance research focused on other animals or relied on invasive implanted electrodes to give commands. Instead, Bevly and his team created an external, real-time navigation system for trained dogs.
They designed a custom harness equipped with GPS, sensors, a processor and a radio modem that connects wirelessly to a computer system. The pack vibrates slightly on the left or right side and emits different tones to direct the dog.
Unlike robots, dogs have the innate capability to get past a variety of obstacles, said Paul Waggoner, a senior scientist at the Canine Detection Research Institute who worked on the study. The challenge was to create software that took the dog's natural inclinations into account while guiding him accurately to a destination.
A trained yellow lab named Major tested the system at the university's Canine Detection Research Institute. The results, which were published in the journal Personal Ubiquitous Computing, showed Major had a high success rate when directed to points several hundred meters apart.
In the trials, the dog followed directions accurately 80 percent of the time, and the computer issued correct commands 99 percent of the time.
Next, the team is looking at guiding a dog through more complex tasks, and at greater distances.
"We're looking at longer range guidance, where you might need a dog to go three or four miles," Bevly said.
The system has implications for military, security, and law enforcement operations.
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