Mission Mongoose
Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) promotes “the science and practice of humanitarian response worldwide.”
One such project teams an explosive-sniffing mongoose with a therefore cheaper and dumber robot to map landmines in countries so unfortunately afflicted.
Thrishantha Nanayakkara in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, details the training of dwarf mongooses (mongeese? - you knew I’d rhetorically pose it) to identify C4 explosive. With olfactory sensitivity over 1000 times we humans, the slinky rodents were quite capable - but had to be made willing. Cheese, it eventuated, was a favorite food reward that didn’t overwhelm their noses when learning to sniff the explosives during increasingly difficult testing.
The point of a mongoose is its advantage over dogs, most commonly used. As one learns from Henry Lawson’s The Loaded Dog the slobbering ‘best friend’ is likely to return from the jungle - having executed your edict - with the ticking device clasped (not particularly gently) between their great idiotic jaws.
Mongooses are too light to trigger devices and save the robot needing detection smarts - a considerable research and engineering payload - and can out-sniff a dog.
Thrishantha and colleagues Tharindu Dissanayake, Prasanna Mahipala and K. A. Gayan Sanjaya recently presented this paper on “Human-Animal-Robot Cooperative System for Anti-Personal Mine Detection” based on research at the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, a name synonymous with our sorely-missed dear old friend Arthur C. Clarke, its Chancellor from 1979 to 2002.
The team uploaded a video to YouTube showing a tandem pair of “iguana” robots creeping along carrying a metal detector and stuff, being guided by both a mongoose sniffer and the human.
A close-up in the video below shows in detail the “semi-autonomous legged robot” traipsing through the undergrowth Iguana-like perhaps, but reminding me more of a Millipede (Diplpoda) in its blind relentless stumble.
More information:
* Original presentation paper outlining research
* Thrishantha Nanayakkara’s “Humanitarian Robotics” page
* Thrishantha’s landing page at Harvard - with link to Harvard Humanitarian Initiative
It makes me wonder what humans are thinking [not much, is my chief observation].
Anti-personnel land mines rank amongst the most evil criminal inventions. Their aim is diabolical. As if the military tactical use is not morally-borderline - like the outlawed use of chemical warfare - munitions manufacturers continue to devastate large tracts of poorer countries for decades with unexploded mines. The war ends, the civilians and their descendents pay an endless price.
If you research, manufacture, or sell these things, we’re thinking of you. Not nicely.
