Thor's trainer is involved in this project and I got her permission to post from her newsletter because I think it is fascinating and love learning about more ways dogs can work with us. The dogs she is working are a GSD and two Goldens.

"The dogs and I have been busy training for a project in collaboration with MIT Lincoln Labs. The project is to train the dogs to carry cameras into a 1 Km area without a handler. The dogs will be wearing packs and head gear that will have web cameras so that they can take as much video footage as possible. The team will use this data to recreate the 1 km grid in as much detail as possible. Various items will be hidden in the grid that the team is hoping to identify and record and whichever team is able to recreate the grid as closely as possible to the actual grid will win. Some of the other tools being used are robots, remote control helicopters and airplanes and some very sophisticated remote control trucks all mounted with cameras. Cameo, Rush and Tess are the dogs that I am training for the day of the contest and they are doing really well. We are working on distance for our behaviors of out, move west, move east, sit and down at a distance and find. The training has been a challenge because the behaviors have to be fluent and precise. There is no reinforcement available at the distance I am working them and it will be difficult for me to be able to see if they are performing the behaviors correctly or not since there is no live video feed. I have worked for 4 months on getting reliability for these main behaviors as well as made sure that my basic obedience cues are precise and accurate and the dogs are consistent with their responses.
The contest in is 2 weeks and I am really looking forward to it. I am working on extending the distance of the behaviors as far as I can without losing the accuracy as well as attempting to transfer the cues to radio signal over a walkie talkie type collar apparatus. The radio collar isn’t new to us as we have done some work with it earlier in the training but it is difficult for the dogs to decipher that it’s my voice and that the cues though they sound different are actually the same as the ones they know. That is likely our project for the next two weeks, trying to get the same reliability of behaviors under this somewhat new circumstance.

This is probably the largest training project we’ve ever undertaken and it has really been fun for us. Putting your training to the test can be intimidating though, especially when you are working with people who know nothing about dogs. The team has been very supportive but the circumstances that we are asking the dog to work in are far from reinforcing to the dogs. In most search type work the handler is not that far away from the dog and in the end when he makes a “find” be it person or object he is right there to confirm that the dog did indeed find someone and reward him for his efforts. I will be a good distance away from the dogs most of the time they are working and really won’t be able to tell if they have found something. Most distance training for other disciplines where the dog must work far away from the handler involves some type of reinforcement for the dog on the spot. In field training handlers cast the dogs for long distances searching for a fallen bird and in the end the dog finds the bird and gets reinforced for looking for it. In police work the dog is sent into a building looking for a bad guy and then corners him and holds him until the handler comes and takes him away. What we are doing is more like surveillance work where the dog is a being sent out to roam and area, get as much information on camera as possible and move on. I plan to cast them out as far as they will go, move them East and West and then call them in to reinforce them. I hope it works !!! Since MIT Lincoln labs is funded by the Airforce I guess you could say we are doing our part in helping to improve technology for our country. Who knows someday maybe they will use what they learn to help someone in a collapsed building or other dangerous situation."

CANINE UNIVERSITY NEWS<<<<>>>>September 2010<<<<<>>>>>(c) 2010 Canine University(R)
Gerilyn Bielakiewicz CPDT