The device is for APOPO, a global organization that deploys "HeroRATS"
While dogs are widely recognized for their role in search-and-rescue missions, rats are sometimes superior — especially in dangerous, tight spaces. Known as the hero rat, the East African Savanna pouched rats are smart and fast. With a powerful sense of smell, they are effective at a variety of humanitarian tasks — light enough to move across landmines without triggering them, yet strong enough to carry tech-filled backpacks for search-and-rescue operations.
A recent BYU engineering capstone team took on the challenge of designing an improved backpack localization device for APOPO, a global organization that has deployed HeroRATS for more than 25 years. APOPO’s rats have helped save millions of lives by sniffing out explosives in war-torn regions and detecting tuberculosis in laboratory settings. For search-and-rescue efforts, APOPO needed a new device that rats could wear while locating survivors in collapsed buildings after earthquakes, one that functions without a GPS signal.
To better understand the animals they would be designing for, the engineering students visited Hogle Zoo to meet and interact with East African Savanna pouched rats.
“When I first started the project, I was thinking, 'how could a rat wear a backpack?'” said Quinn Bird, an electrical engineering student. “Going to the zoo and seeing that these are actually big rats that can carry multiple pounds helped us visualize and carry out what we were trying to make.”
After meeting the rats, the students spent weeks developing a system that integrated visual odometry, an inertial measurement unit and machine learning into a Raspberry Pi computer small enough for a rat to carry. The system stores valuable data that the rat is trained to bring back to the rescue team.
At the end of the capstone project, the students presented APOPO with three improved elements that could be added to smart backpacks. The main benefits of the overall design are its effectiveness underground and its small size.
“When a building collapses, no signal is going to get through, so we couldn’t use anything wireless,” said Hyrum Mangum, computer engineering student and team leader. “We only added four or five grams to APOPO’s existing backpack and camera — an additional small camera module and a little inertial measurement unit.”
Mangum and the capstone engineering students were inspired by the opportunity to help problem-solve for a humanitarian purpose.
“APOPO is frankly revolutionary in their ability to draw on this unique asset [animal-human collaborations] that we have in the world,” Mangum said. “It’s inspiring to see that there are people out there who are thinking creatively and working intentionally to solve real problems.”
See APOPO.org to learn more about HeroRATS and inspiring animal-human collaborations.
