Devices Go Nose to Nose With Bomb-Sniffer Dogs

By HENRY FOUNTAIN, NYT

SAINT-LOUIS, France — Denis Spitzer wants to beat dogs at their own game.

At a binational armaments and security research center here in eastern France, Dr. Spitzer and his colleagues are working on a sensor to detect vapors 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 Dr. Spitzer are making progress — and there are some vapor detectors on the market — when it comes to sensitivity and selectivity, dogs still reign supreme.

(More here.)