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 COLUMN
Who'll let the dogs out? REPORTS COMING out of Washington say that the airline industry is balking at deadlines imposed on it by the Homeland Defense Act recently passed by Congress. Buried among the many reasons that the industry believes will make compliance difficult is the fact that it is not possible to train enough bomb-sniffing dogs.
To give the airline industry a head start, I've done a preliminary feasibility study for them. Stuart Wallock, director of business planning at Sony Electronics' Entertainment Robot America (ERA) division, makers of Aibo, the robotic dog, understated it so well when he told me, "There are a lot of different functionalities that can come from the combination of hardware and software." Currently, Sony calls its robotic, programmable pooch the Aibo Entertainment Robot, but there is no reason why it can't be reconfigured for commercial uses. Does a technology exist that has a better sniffer than a real, live dog? The answer is yes, according to my cursory research, and at the risk of making readers groan, I have only just "scratched" the surface. Sensor technology can detect chemical substances used in explosive devices. In fact, some patents on this were originally held by Larson Davis and Sensar. Ron Pretlac, at another sensor company, Electronic Sensor Technology (EST) in Newbury Park, Calif., says that whereas a dog typically must be trained to sniff out one particular vapor in the air, EST's zNose product can detect virtually everything right out of the box. Mind you, EST does not want to get into the business of putting pooches on the unemployment line, but Pretlac does say that the zNose technology sniffs out hydrocarbons in the C4-to-C30 range, which covers just about everything, and the programmable zNose can set off an alarm if it detects a vapor it shouldn't. Also programmable is the Aibo, which even has an 802.11b wireless networking option (now called Wi-Fi) that allows it to send information back to a PC, notebook, or handheld. Aibo is extensible, says John DeCuir, senior engineer in charge of software development at Sony Electronics' ERA. It seems the doggie has a core unit called OPEN-R that is open to third-party developers and would allow a company to plug in its explosives-detecting sensors. My guess is there are more programmers and electrical engineers in the world than dog trainers. So come on, airline industry, let the robotic dogs out. Ephraim Schwartz is an editor at large in InfoWorld's news department. Get this column free via e-mail each week. Sign up at www.iwsubscribe.com/newsletters . MORE > SPONSORED WHITE PAPERS 
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