An Israeli firm has designed a security system to ensure jail
breakers or intrudersl Harnessing technology that interprets
barking-to see if an animal is responding to a threat instead of just
routinely woofing-the company aims to replace or supplement expensive
electronic surveillance systems.
"There is currently very little utilization of the watchdog's early
warning capabilities," says privately owned manufacturer Bio-Sense
Technologies, based in the Israeli town of Petah Tikva, on its Web
site.
The company, BioSense Rechnologies, says dogs have better night
vision than humans and a vastly superior sense of smell and
hearing-used computers to analyze 350 barks and found dogs of all
breeds and sizes barked the same alarm when they sensed a threat.
If the dogs sense an intruder or attempted security breach, dozens
of sensors around the facility pick up their "alarm bark" and alert
the human operators in the control room.
Dubbed "Doguard", the Dog Bio Security system is in place in
high-security Eshel Prison as well as Israeli military bases, water
installations, farms, ranches, garages and in Jewish settlements in
the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli Eshel Prison installed the system last year to
supplement its existing network of electric fences and human guards.
Now Rex, a brown American Staffordshire Terrier, Emmy, a white
Caanan, and 27 other dogs guarding the prison are tracked by sensors
to alert guards to any attempted breakout at the jail, which houses
about 3,000 prisoners including Israelis and Palestinians.
There have been no escape attempts since the system was installed,
but Moris is convinced it works. He said prisoners at other
facilities had been able to escape "because dogs barked but no alert
was sent to the guards".
During a demonstration an alarm wailed as Rex and Emmy raced,
growling and snarling, alongside one of the facility's metal fences,
which a man in a brown uniform was trying to scale the fence from the
other side.
Officers in a small basement office nearby watched on a surveillance
video and spoke into their walkie-talkies as a wall of computer
screens flashed in red: "Dog alarm in Sector 12".
Seconds later, several prison guards, wielding clubs, raced to the
scene and tackled the man to the ground.
By monitoring not just the dogs' barks, but also their physiological
responses-like heart rates-it joins a trend for computer systems
building on animal knowledge that humans also share.
However, Doguard is not foolproof. When first set up at Eshel Prison
and at a water installation and farm in central Israel, the dogs
triggered several false alarms, officials said.
"The dogs need two to three weeks to adapt-they must get to know
their territory," said Daniel Low, chief executive officer of Meniv
Rishon, the municipal water system of the Israeli town of Rishon
Lezion. Low said he had installed the system in several places to
replace guards.
Galia Alon, an official at Modi'in Ezrahi, a large Israeli security
company that supplies private guards and equipment, cautioned against
relying on dogs as a first line of defense.
."Dogs are excellent at spotting intruders-they are well trained and
have a more sharpened sense of smell than humans," she said. "But
people can identify people by looking at them and talking to them,
and they are more inclined to catch them."
Yossi Brami, manager of a dairy at Kibbutz Gezer, a communal farm,
had the system installed two months ago. He said he was told dogs
work better in pairs because one signals to the other if an intruder
appears, so two were placed to guard his calves.
Eshel Prison's dogs live in individual kennels. Several times a day,
they are let out to patrol buildings, where they are unleashed in a
fenced-in compound. At Kibbutz Gezer, dogs Chief and Lola are kept on
a long chain and are released to run around the farm several times a
day. The dogs guarding Meniv Rishon are also chained