A sniffing dog at work. | credits: google.com
At a binational armaments and security research centre in eastern France, Spitzer and his colleagues are working on a sensor to detect vapours of TNT and other explosives in very faint amounts, as might emanate from a bomb being smuggled through airport security. Using microscopic slivers of silicon covered with forests of even smaller tubes of titanium oxide, they aim to create a device that could supplement, perhaps even supplant, the best mobile bomb detector in the business: the sniffer dog.
But emulating the nose and brain of a trained dog is a formidable task. A bomb-sniffing device must be extremely sensitive, able to develop a signal from a relative handful of molecules. And it must be highly selective, able to distinguish an explosive from the “noise” of other compounds.
While researchers like Spitzer are making progress – and there are some vapor detectors on the market – when it comes to sensitivity and selectivity, dogs still reign supreme.
“Dogs are awesome,” said Aimee Rose, a product sales director at the sensor
