A Dutch electrical engineer has invented backpacks for East African rescue rats which are being trained to look for survivors in collapsed buildings.

Eindhoven University alumni Sander Verdiesen works as a volunteer for Belgian/American non profit organisation APOPO, which specialises in projects using the rats, whose highly developed sense of smell is already used to track down landmines and tuberculosis.

The RescueRat backpack project, which is based in Tanzania, aims to train rats to go into buildings following earthquakes or floods and look for survivors, Verdiesen told RTL Nieuws. ‘We train them in a designated space, with rubble and stuff to distract them to see if they can find the person and then come back to where they went in.’

The backpack designed by Verdiesen contains a camera, a microphone and a transmitter. ‘The rat also has a little ball attached to its chest which it can pull when it finds a person. That will set off a signal to rescuers so they know to send more people to that particular spot.’

The project is facing a number of challenges, Verdiesen said. ‘The backpacks need to be lighter and as compact as possible. Sending signals from below ground isn’t straightforward either but we are working on that.

‘As far as the rats are concerned we need to find out how sensitive they are to distractions,’ he said. ‘What if it comes across a kitchen full of cheese? These are the sorts of problems we need to solve during the training.’