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. 

Mongoose-Robot team for sniffing and marking land mines

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.

Iguana-like legged robot

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.

I love nanotechnology, even if only because the prefix ‘nano’ evokes the impressive dimensions of Star Trek Voyager’s co-opted crew member, who dispensed nano-probes as prolifically as the machine in your college gym dispenses .. oops.

In dumbing down robotics we tend to overlook the tiny invisible.

Robots will never be artificial life without the finer details of on-board perception. Companies like Nanomix demonstrate working miniatures that we lay folk can only gape at with perplexed surprise, as your average IT helpdesk client gasps when the techie restarts their errant PC: "Computers can do that?"

If for no other reason, I would feature Namomix for their lovely flash banner, or fabulous photo gallery, even if a little off-topic for Bot7.

Oops, I think we just snagged their copyright tripwire (illustration at left)

Why mention them, anyhow? A few months ago they got press for an ‘electronic nose’ but the story failed to excite because illustrations comprised Nanomix dudes wielding small olfactory oddments, whereas we, the unwashed, wanted great picks of a Pythonesque (as in Monty, not some hybrid OOL) rubbery hydrogen-powered snoz warping around a crime scene pushing Inspector Rex out of the way.

Convergent technologies will create our imminent superbeing, and the ‘nano’ part, though less glamorous by diminution, will probably be the most awe-inspiring.

Nanomix Sensation technology is contained in an array of devices that would fit on the head of a pin. Carbon nanotubes are combined on silicon microstructures. Electrical impedance provides a characteristic signal.

The nanotube network, coated with a functional layer that interacts with the chemical or biological analyte of interest, results in measurable change in electronic characteristics. The one nanometer diameter of the nanotubes allows for ultra-sensitive detection as very slight changes in electronic characteristics can be measured.

Hmm, I understand each word, taken separately.