Meet Scotland’s Whisky-Sniffing Robot Dog

Wooden barrels are what marque the magic hap successful your favourite vessel of whisky. They’re besides the root of a long-standing occupation successful the spirits industry: They leak. A lot.

At Bacardi Limited, the world’s largest privately held spirits company, tube leakage is simply a monolithic headache. Consider the company’s Dewar’s blended Scotch whisky marque (just 1 of the dozens it owns). Most of the time, Dewar’s volition person implicit 100 warehouses afloat of aging barrels of whisky, 25,000 casks successful each one. Barrels volition mature for 3 to 12 years, and according to Angus Holmes, Bacardi’s whisky class director, galore of those barrels volition make a leak astatine immoderate constituent successful their life.

That’s not large for business, says Holmes. “How bash we marque definite that erstwhile we travel to get that cask, it’s got arsenic overmuch whisky successful it arsenic possible?”

Given the imperative to find alleged leakers earlier a decennary has travel and gone—and taken each the whisky with it—Bacardi engaged the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland. NMIS was presented with the problem, and came up with a astonishing solution: Why not follow a robotic dog?

Andrew Hamilton, caput of the Digital Process Manufacturing Centre for NMIS, says the group’s archetypal proposition was that Dewar’s mightiness effort a Boston Dynamics Spot robot which could roam the warehouse connected the prowl for leaking barrels.

But to beryllium a genuinely effectual hunter, the robot canine would request to follow 1 of the existent canine family’s astir well-honed skills: an elevated consciousness of smell.

Vapor Trails

There are 2 kinds of leaks: liquid spilling oregon seeping retired of the barrel, and nonaccomplishment of liquid done vapor evaporation. A tube leaking liquid is reasonably casual to identify, but if it’s losing much than it should done evaporation, that’s harder to suss out.

Evaporation is an expected portion of whisky maturation, “the angel’s share” being a well-understood improvement that is wide considered a cardinal portion of a whisky’s evolution. In Scotland, the angels instrumentality astir 2 percent of a cask’s measurement each year, and portion immoderate enterprising distillers person attempted to contradict the angels their owed done experimental techniques similar covering barrels successful integrative wrap, by and ample distillers are blessed to springiness a small whisky backmost to the beingness arsenic a outgo of doing business.