Stealthy Insect Sensors

Deep inside the dark hive, news spread quickly. Agent Apis had arrived only moments before and begun a frenetic dance on Comb 2-13. Her announcement was unambiguous: Suicide bomber with a C-4 explosive belt at 12 degrees, 240 meters. The bees sprang into action. This was the moment for which they'd been trained. The fate of the nation lay in their hands . . .

Nothing like a scientist hyping his research to the press to generate more funding:

We are very excited at the success of our research as it could have far-reaching implications for both defense and homeland security.

Dr. Tim Haarman, Project Leader
Stealthy Insect Sensor Project
Los Alamos National Laboratory

Go ahead, make fun. Sure, it's a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) project. Yes, it's cost $2.3 million so far. Fine, bees only live a few weeks and must be trained to sniff explosives before going into the field. Well, yes, we need to come up with some way to determine when their probosci are extended.

But, the Stealthy Insect Sensor Project team won a 2005 Distinguished Performance Award at Los Alamos, and you probably didn't.

Creating a controlled environment in which they could accurately determine the bees’ capabilities, the team demonstrated that the bees’natural reaction to food — a proboscis extension reflex (PER) in which they stick out their tongues — could be used to record an unambiguous response to scent. The bees responded with a PER when they were exposed to explosive vapors. This paradigm has been tested many times in both laboratory and field settings and is a viable alternative to using dogs or elaborate hardware to detect explosives at low concentrations. The project was so successful that the team turned a $500 thousand seedling project into a $1.8 million Phase 2 project for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

There are a few small technical glitches that must be overcome to ready this technology for use in the field, but it's basically nothing more than building some shoe box-sized bee boxes.

Haarmann said the bees could be carried in hand-held detectors the size of a shoe box, and could be used to sniff out explosives in airports, roadside security checks, or even placed in robot bomb disposal equipment.

He said the next step would be to manufacture the bee boxes and train security guards in their use.

"It would be great to start saving some lives with this," he said.

The researchers used positive reinforcement to train the bees to have a PER when exposed to explosive vapors. Presumably, they will need to use negative reinforcement to prevent PERs when exposed to grandma's lavender perfume at the airport. Or perhaps we can simply ban the wearing of perfumes to make the bees' work easier.

•  bees in charge of the no-fly list.

  they've been waiting for this for a long time.

  by pigpaste on Tue Nov 28, 2006 at 08:56:00 AM PDT