Woof! Blowing (Or Rather Barking) Our Own Horn

January 3, 2007 - 10:49 PM by

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Ya’ll may know that this blog is brought to you by an organization called Israel 21c. But even if you do, you don’t neccessarily know what Israel 21c does (besides support this fine blog)

Well, today, we’ve got a fine example, so I’ll show you.

I’ll link to the story in USA Today, but you can find it in any of these papers — and others.

From yap to growl, Israeli device dogs intruders

BEERSHEBA, Israel (Reuters) — An Israeli firm has designed a security system to ensure jailbreakers or intruders find a guard dog’s bark can indeed be worse than its bite.

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 website. The company — which says dogs have better night vision than humans and a vastly superior sense of smell and hearing — used computers to analyse 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.

And it continues, feel free to read the rest.

Now the story behind the story is that this news item was found by Israel 21c, and a report about the company first appeared here on the organization’s website.

Now, there are plenty of people who read the stories on the website. But their impact goes further. Over the years, Israel 21c has become a place where journalists look for stories about breakthrough Israeli companies like Bio-Sense and the things that they do, and other “beyond the conflict” reporting about Israel and when they don’t look hard enough, Israel 21c makes sure they know about them.

And this story made it to the Reuters bureau in Jerusalem, and on to news outlets around the world. Pretty cool, no?

Tags: • Category: History and Culture 

Comments

One Comment on Woof! Blowing (Or Rather Barking) Our Own Horn

  1. Katherine on Thu, Jan 4th 2007 5:34 AM

    2. Very cool yes! but just one word about this alarm system. I am quite sure it is the one our neighbours have installed in our moshav to guard their goat barn from thieves. It is meant to learn gradually when the dogs really mean it, and when they’re just curious. So far it has gone off 54322 times. Including on Shabbat. I don’t think it has learnt yet! But it is most amusing to see our neighbour get a call on his cellphone, and to see him running to the goat barn because his alarm system is calling him on his cellphone. The miracles of modern technology!

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