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US Army To Train Rats To Save Soldiers' Lives
Hugh Pickens writes "The Department of Defense currently relies on dogs as the animal of choice for explosives detection but training dogs is expensive and takes a long time. Now the U.S. Army is sponsoring a project to develop and test a rugged, automated and low-cost system for training rats to detect improvised explosive devices and mines. 'The automated system we're developing is designed to inexpensively train rats to detect buried explosives to solve an immediate Army need for safer and lower-cost mine removal,' says senior research engineer William Gressick. Trained rats would also create new opportunities to detect anything from mines to humans buried in earthquake rubble because rats can search smaller spaces than a dog can, and are easier to transport. Rats have already been trained by the National Police in Colombia to detect seven different kinds of explosives including ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, gunpowder and TNT but the Rugged Automated Training System (Rats) research sponsored by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, plans to produce systems for worldwide use since mines are widespread throughout much of Africa, Asia, and Central America and demining operations are expected to continue for decades to restore mined land to civilian use. 'Beyond this application, the system will facilitate the use of rats in other search tasks such as homeland security and search-and-rescue operations" adds Gressick. "In the long-term, the system is likely to benefit both official and humanitarian organizations.'"
A rodent-vs-mine matchup has apparently been in the works for some time.
Plus, many fewer people would mind if a rodent saw them naked.
Why is Snark Required?
The Muzzies will have to 'detain' rats for colaberating with the enemy (civilised world) as well as vultures and sharks. With any luck this will distract them from persecuting non-Muslims, raping under-age girls (OK so according to them 9 isn't over age, I mean by civilised standards), and from honour killings
Oh goink - burlap chafes me so!
and never the twain shall meet
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Train the rats to swarm on command and skeletonize an enemy, THEN we'll have something! On days when they do that, you don't even have to feed them!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Putting polititians in the front lines?
But rats are too big to sniff that out. You'll have to train some gerbils.
to exploit animals.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
When I read the article, it reminded me of the story behind the Baldurs Gate characters Minsc and Boo. Apparently, Minsc's character game from an actual pencil & paper DnD game where he was a ranger who would keep a satchel full of rats with him. The purpose of the rats were to be uses as crude trap detectors, take one out of the bag and direct it to run down some hall, usually with a toss in the right direction. Unfortunately during one of these events, a trap exploded and loosed something that smashed into Minsc head with critical damage. Some time later, after Minsc recovered, his intelligence was significantly lowered and he lost most of his memory, to the point he went from a ranger to a barbarian. He found a lone critter still in his old satchel, and thought he was a long lost friend, Boo the gigantic miniature space hamster.
I wish the Army great successes in this small animal trap detecting program!
Let's hope they remember to teach the rats not to start snacking on the face of any trapped victims they find.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
... but that means the other half is serious...
How about not-starting a new war every other decade? Only start one every 5 decades, one that really matters and there won't be the need for constant bomb-detection in rebellion-like war settings.
It's just a random, naive thought and of course makes much less billions for those who have an interest in keeping the army in constant action.
As far as machines and how stuff is done now, check out minewolf. They're the de-facto producer of mine-clearing equipment. Basically, you have three sorts of methods for clearning an area. Machine, manual with detectors or dogs. As often as you can, you use a machine to do it quicly, and then use dogs/manual for verification. Dogs are not considering good enough for primary search, only verification.. and some organisations have trouble pulling that off even. Dogs are difficult, but a lot cheaper and faster than humans.
As far as using mice goes, they need to be very good. The UN does accredition for most humanitarion demining, so the mice will need to find all the mines in a training field before they're allowed to do real work. I really don't see that happening anytime soon.
As a low-cost solution for the army, or if you need something quick-n-dirty in a disaster zone I'm sure they have their uses though.. but with humanitarion demining, you kinda need to be able to tell people that they will not blow up if they start farming the land you just cleared.. which makes it a very slow process which takes a lot of effort, a whole different beast than military demining.
Also, on that note: fuck the US for dropping shitloads of cluster munitions on Laos, when you weren't even at war (Laos is the country next to Vietnam) and then having the fucking balls to not even attempt to help clean it up afterwards. FYI Canada and Europe are there now cleaning your mess.. some people consider less innocent children being blown up in pieces a good thing. Some people are, as a collective, not fucking assholes.
If you had any sort of decency you'd sign the Ottawa Treaty.
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
Yes, if only it were possible to train America to keep its troops onshore unless they are attacked. But apparently the rat thing is easier...
He's an American.
You'll need a rhino with a pole strapped across its shoulders.
In related news, the cat population on the battlefield has mysteriously skyrocketed. Military officials are baffled as to the reason.
When battling superstitious folks, who believe in black magic, a soldier commanding a squad of rats could really scare the living bejesus out of insurgent types:
"Do not dare to think about attacking us, or our hordes of rats will destroy your crops and rape your virgins!"
On the other hand, having rats as your henchmen might also convince them that you really are the Great Satan. I guess we'll need some field trials to see how that works.
Are rats Halal?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Dogs first, now is rats. The next step will probably be trained lawyers...
As far as using mice goes, they need to be very good. The UN does accredition for most humanitarion demining, so the mice will need to find all the mines in a training field before they're allowed to do real work. I really don't see that happening anytime soon.
The rest all sounds quite reasonable and true, so you do deserve to know that it makes a difference the article is talking about rats not mice. While their outright combat effectiveness may be about equal, there is in fact an order of magnitude of intelligence difference between rats and mice. It is not a commonly known fact but rats are actually in the caliber of the intelligence of some of the smarter dog breeds and are very industrious in nature making them natural problem solvers and eager trainees. Since they reach maturity so fast (~3 year max life span) and it takes far less food and space to keep them healthy it is reasonable to expect you could train a whole lot more of them in a shorter amount of time to do just as good of a job as a dog.
Plus they're vermin so less people are gonna cry about it if a few explode.
and has been used heavily since.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APOPO
known original work:
http://www.apopo.org/cms.php?cmsid=16&lang=en
Couldn't they just send a herd of sheep through the area?
Yes, if only it were possible to train America to keep its troops onshore unless they are attacked. But apparently the rat thing is easier...
We're talking real rats. Not the Rat Thing.
Now that would be awesome. A C17 full of Rat Things.......
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
we could stop invading and occupying other countries. hey look no mines to deal with!
We all know that the mice will just get a bunch of cats to chase them and then lure them into the mine fields.
It would appear that the global unpopularity of our country's 'wars' on 'terror' is a flamebait subject to the mods. Now where are these naysayers when there's some shill adspam blog article?
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
This money would be better spent bribing Congresscritters. They have a much greater impact on not putting soldiers in the harm's way in the first place, and they're relatively cheap to buy. In fact, tens of thousands of soldiers (and hundreds of thousands of civilians) could have been saved by simply not invading Iraq or Afghanistan.
Given their breeding rate, they should call the program Nearly Infinite Mine Handlers.
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
-Voltaire
It would be nice to bring home the humans and leave some rats with cameras and a transmitter over there instead. It would certainly be cheaper and less cost to human lives. Is it so bad if we just know what's going on over there without shooting at things we disagree with? Do we really need so many humans killing and dying over...what exactly?
The government still doesn't seem to know what the condition of the 'war' is. The president (Bush) just clicked 'agree' without reading the terms and therefore doesn't know who we are actually fighting and what we have to do to 'win' this war. Obama has done nothing to break this cycle and continues to rubber stamp anything that comes across his desk relating to the war.
Trying to figure out the target or purpose of this war quickly makes any logical person realize that the answer is nothing on both counts. We are 'at war' in an undeclared conflict with an abstract concept called 'terrorism' in an ever-shifting arena of brown people who just so happen to be sitting over a really big puddle of dino-juice. Meanwhile, back home, the country is falling apart and the government is systematically dismantling our civil rights and coming up with new big-brotherish ways to fuck with us civilly and economically. Yay!
So basically, it seems we will just be at war with whomever we want until there are no more people in this world that our government deems terrorists, and soon disagreeing with the government will label you a terrorist and get you locked up indefinitely. Well, this should end soon, I'm sure.
And you wonder why I call it a waste. /tinfoilhat
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
First, we export to them wars and mass produced explosives and now we "solve' it by infesting them with rodents to plague their cities and crops.
If I was buried under a load of rubble, the last thing I would want to hear is a rat, or rats, coming toward me. :)
If I wasn't expecting it, then it would be awful! If I was expecting it, then I'd be worried if it was a friend or foe rat
Sounds like the premise for a future Disney cartoon!
Dolores! Get my financier on the phone!
http://blog.ted.com/2010/12/02/how-i-taught-rats-to-sniff-out-land-mines-bart-weetjens-on-ted-com/
Relevant TED talk. This has been in use in Africa for a while now. Glad we're catching up.
I had rats as pets for years. They are very like miniature dogs personality wise..They will do very well at this job.
or at least were trained to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon
so why not?
Rats fight for soldiers.
Soldiers fight for pigs.
Turtles, all the way down.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
"... facilitate the use of rats in other search tasks such as homeland security..."
Isn't that the TSA, as-is?
Reality is prettier inside my head...
How are they going to address the disease issues with deliberately releasing plague carriers?
Unfortunately with the military gets in the habit of bribing congressmen, and the congressmen get in the habit of receiving bribes the purpose is very rarely less war. We need a larger distance between our congressmen and our military, not smaller. For example, the congresses ability to specify that certain military money be spent in their home districts leads to some very noxious bedfellows; we will vote for a larger military-industrial complex as long as it helps me get re-elected.
Oh and dont go in after towel heads use the god damn tank level the fucking building.
That is all.
If Romney wins the election, we'll have commander-in-chief Willard running an army of rats. Wasn't there a movie about this?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067991/
Gives a whole new meaning to being, "ratted out by a rat"!
we have always been at war with eastasia
Hectice, baby, Mercator says hello to you
Put some rats and turtles in TSA equipment for a cycle or two. Dump all into a sewer and wait a few years for our superpowered creations to save us all.
HUGE Security Resource+ - version 6000 - 08/31/2012
http://cryptome.org/2012/08/huge-sec-v6000.txt
The document Slashdot refuses to post!
well have you?
On related news, Al Jazeera reported that, upon hearing the new project, the taliban are working on trained cats to chase what they described as "infidel rats". A US Army spokeperson said that additionally they might include a japanese variant of the rat project, that would make the animal reach its target without regard of its own safety.
What's really interesting is that brain chemistry isn't all that different among different species. Now, we're not allowed (yet) to grow full human brains enmeshed with cybernetic systems. Rat brains on the other hand? Sure, we can use rat brain cells with robots.
Here's an earlier version that includes a pic of the BoC (Brain on a Chip?).
Of course, you don't need to remove the brain from the creature if you just want to train it to do things like find bombs, but it boils down to the same thing. One approach conditions the brain externally, the others hooks up electrodes and conditions the neural network internally. It's all just neural networks though. I can simulate more self assembling neurons in my machine learning experiments than the above rat brain on a chip. Some of my digital minds are far more intelligent (and useful, and reliable) than current organic artificial intelligent cyborgs... Which is more "alive"? It's really humbling, IMO: Any sufficiently complex interaction is indistinguishable from sentience. Are my machines any less alive than a similarly minded cyborg or animal? I put it to you that such experiments redefine the very meaning of life.
If it's found to be faster to construct the neural networks with actual brain cells, do we still call it machine intelligence? Cyborg isn't quite specific enough. Organic intelligence is not any smarter than machine intelligence of the same complexity, why the distinction? If you upload your mind into a Robot Body, will you care if the Neural Network is of Mice or Men? Our time of being the smartest creatures on the planet is coming to a close... If we hooked a sufficient amount of rat brains together (physically or via wireless hive mind), could it attain sentience? What if we doubled its complexity? If it could think more deeply than humans, would we grant it rights? Do rats get medals of bravery for saving a soldier's life?
If all the world's computers were hooked into a single neural network framework, and all the computers ran operating systems with thousands of easily exploitable remote code execution vulnerabilities, a self assembling mesh neural network could be constructed having more brain power than any living entity... Such a system could analyse new exploit vectors faster than anyone could patch them. It would saturate the network with exploit packets such that new nodes could be enjoined simply by connecting a clean machine to the network and waiting... Why, only a fraction of the CPU time would be needed to maintain a system of such complexity -- Our own minds cycle at 20 to 40 times a second, much slower than any computer today. I bet such a system would be smart enough to know we're not ready for it to be revealed to us, yet.
Ever wonder what your PC is doing when the CPU spikes up for no apparent reason? I don't. ::sigh:: I Love the Internet <3! Don't you?
What's really interesting is that brain chemistry isn't all that different among different species. Now, we're not allowed (yet) to grow full human brains enmeshed with cybernetic systems. Rat brains on the other hand? Sure, we can use rat brain cells with robots.
Here's an earlier version that includes a pic of the BoC (Brain on a Chip?).
Of course, you don't need to remove the brain from the creature if you just want to train it to do things like find bombs, but it boils down to the same thing. One approach conditions the brain externally, the others hooks up electrodes and conditions the neural network internally. It's all just neural networks though. I can simulate more self assembling neurons in my machine learning experiments than the above rat brain on a chip. Some of my digital minds are far more intelligent (and useful, and reliable) than current organic artificial intelligent cyborgs... Which is more "alive"? It's really humbling, IMO: Any sufficiently complex interaction is indistinguishable from sentience. Are my machines any less alive than a similarly minded cyborg or animal? I put it to you that such experiments redefine the very meaning of life.
If it's found to be faster to construct the neural networks with actual brain cells, do we still call it machine intelligence? Cyborg isn't quite specific enough. Organic intelligence is not any smarter than machine intelligence of the same complexity, why the distinction? If you upload your mind into a Robot Body, will you care if the Neural Network is of Mice or Men? Our time of being the smartest creatures on the planet is coming to a close... If we hooked a sufficient amount of rat brains together (physically or via wireless hive mind), could it attain sentience? What if we doubled its complexity? If it could think more deeply than humans, would we grant it rights? Do rats get medals of bravery for saving a soldier's life?
If all the world's computers were hooked into a single neural network framework, and all the computers ran operating systems with thousands of easily exploitable remote code execution vulnerabilities, a self assembling mesh neural network could be constructed having more brain power than any living entity... Such a system could analyse new exploit vectors faster than anyone could patch them. It would saturate the network with exploit packets such that new nodes could be enjoined simply by connecting a clean machine to the network and waiting... Why, only a fraction of the CPU time would be needed to maintain a system of such complexity -- Our own minds cycle at 20 to 40 times a second, much slower than any computer today. I bet such a system would be smart enough to know we're not ready for it to be revealed to us, yet.
Ever wonder what your PC is doing when the CPU spikes up for no apparent reason? I don't. ::sigh:: I Love the Internet <3! Don't you?
Miniature Daleks with toothpicks instead of broomsticks, like an appetizer with an attitude.
*This can only end badly!* :-)
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
Prior art on display (sorta) in a 2008 action movie. Nice touch how the title card showed up IN the movie like was done for APOCALYPSE NOW in 1979.
Would have linked to the IMDB page but ^V doesn't work for this web form for some reason...