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LONDON, England (CNN) -- Sniffer dogs have long been a useful tool in the search for hidden drugs and explosives, but the future looks bleak for man's best friend as scientists seek to develop a new ultra-sensitive electronic nose device.
They are, indeed, working on such technology and have been for some a number of years, but I don't think the folks with detection dogs are worried about losing their jobs any time soon. There are myriad complexities in how scent is transported that just a simple detection box would need to face.
I work a cadaver dog. So let us say there is a tree in a field - the dog may hit the strongest source there but the actual source of the scent is in the woods adjacent to the field. The tree may be pulling the scent up as a chimney does [common scenario]. It still takes a hander and dog to scan the rest of area using the handler's knowlege of scent transport and the dogs nose and experience to locate the source of the odor.
Couple that with accesisbility issues - e.g., the dog can get places that may be harder for a human with a machine - you can see that there is still a long way to go. Plus a dog can cover MUCH more area than a human can in much less time trying to locate that source. Have that human carrying some device and that will slow them down even more. In a building the complexities of how scent moves is mind boggling.
Still, the goal is to find the drugs, the bomb, the body, whatever so we are all open minded. Drugs and explosives are much simpler scent sources from a technical perspective than human remains, which must be differentiated from animal remains, sewage, and live human scent.
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