Barron Associates Awarded Contract to Develop Second-Generation Animal Training System for Landmine Detection

Landmines represent a serious and lasting threat to public health in many countries throughout the world. Landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) cause severe injury, death, and duress, often denying people access to their homes and land. Barron Associates is developing the Automated Deployable Robust Training (ADROIT) System, an automated and comprehensive environment to train and deploy vertebrates to detect and mark landmines and UXO quickly and accurately. The ADROIT system is designed to be cost-effective and robust, with a focus on training efficiency.

Using the ADROIT system, animals will be trained in custom, modular operant chambers using Pavlovian conditioning procedures following an optimized, multi-stage behavioral shaping protocol. The ADROIT system’s modular nature will facilitate both parallel training and field deployment to increase detection accuracy. The ADROIT system represents the evolution of a previous, highly successful effort to develop a first generation automated training system.