Are there any existing or proposed systems that use a fleet of drones with artificial noses that sniff out and triangulate the source of a particular scent? Like a pack of flying bloodhounds?
None that I know of.
In fact, I don’t know of any ground-based scent detection systems that are as good as a dog yet. So first you need that, and you’ll want to prove any system on the ground (where it can be closer to the target) before you try to deploy it into an airborne system. So I’d expect that you’ll see this technology in government buildings and airports long before anyone puts it into the air.
This gave me a stray thought:
If you wanted the ability to sniff out stuff from the air, how about training turkey vultures? They’re one of the few birds with a developed sense of smell. Immediate thoughts:
1 - Is their sense of smell really THAT developed? How good a nose to you need to find carrion, even from the air?
2 - Training birds is difficult.
Still, the visual of the police having a “buzzard unit” is appealing. Yeah, I know, the turkey vulture isn’t properly called a buzzard. Sounds funnier.
“I lit out from Reno I was trailed by twenty birds …”
THEN, I had to go google for it. Yup somebody’s tried it:
http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/europe/police-train-vultures-to-find-human-remains
It didn’t work:
Would this even work? Smell disperses pretty quickly once you get above ground level. There’s a reason why most birds have excellent eyesight and a poor sense of smell (with the exception of ground-dwelling birds like the kiwi).