John J Romba

Remote Control of War Dogs John J Romba

A major objective of this study was to develop procedures by which a dog handler can control the direction of off-leash movement of his dog by remote means in an unrestricted environment. Several dogs were successfully conditioned to respond to a tone signal to change direction and to make excursions of one-half mile or more under the control of terrain stimuli and of tone signals transmitted by radio. Automated procedures to train dogs to change direction in response to a tone were developed; in these procedures the learning contingencies of reinforcement were arranged by a computer control system. The learning of other scout dog skills is described in terms of sub-programs consisting of small, easy-to-learn steps.