In war-torn areas, there are only two ways of detecting land-mines before they claim limbs or lives: get the help of an armored specialist or use a highly-trained dog.
But that could soon change, contingent upon the success of an electronic "nose" being developed by Tufts researchers that would be capable of detecting buried mines.
The nose is being developed by Joel White and John Kauer, medical school professors, along with chemistry professor David Walt, who brings chemical sensing expertise to the team. The group hopes to create a device capable of sensing buried landmines with a minimum number of false alarms.
According to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, landmines and undetonated explosives killed between 15,000 and 20,000 people last year. Interest in the organization has declined since Princess Diana, a promoter of the cause, died. But White says the military campaign in Afghanistan may raise awareness. "Afghanistan is one of the most heavily mined areas in the world," he said.
The nose relies on 16 optical sensors that detect tiny changes in the air's chemical composition and can signal the presence of a landmine. The group modeled its prototype after the noses of trained dogs and, in some cases, the prototype has been as affective as the dogs in detecting landmines. "This is the first artificial nose that has shown this level of promise for the landmine problem," White said. "There have been other programs, but those systems didn't actually pan out."
Researchers recently tested the device on a Missouri army base, where it reacted well to the presence of various marked landmines. The first field testing was in June, when the nose detected all the buried landmines and had a 40 percent false alarm rate.
The prototype, however, is not perfect. "We're not to the stage to being able to find landmines 100 percent of the time," White said. "If we could continue at this kind of pace, in a year or two's time we could have something that could be fairly reliable."
Although the final device has not been developed, the current version is self-contained and battery-operated. It is somewhat bulky, but White said it is "carryable."
The technology that drives the unit is not original - its sophistication comes from the integration of existing technologies. And although the nose has been developed for landmine detection, it could be used to find thin explosives, pollutants, and narcotics.
The device was featured last month on PBS's Scientific American Frontiers. In Feb. 2001, the show's host, Alan Alda, tested the device. It passed. "Their device performed just as well as the dogs did under similar test conditions," PBS reported. "Both the dog noses and the man-made nose were able to detect the chemical at concentrations below one part per billion, the goal the scientists had aimed for."
Components of the professors' project have been funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Office of Naval Research, and the National Institute of Health. The DARPA grant ended this summer, and the researchers are looking for new funding sources. No funding is available from Tufts, although the University helped the professors procure a patent for some of the technology in the device.
