Leveraging technology development sponsored by a Pentagon agency buttressed with its own funding, the Department of Homeland Security’s development arm plans to build a prototype whole body imaging system that will automatically screen people for potential threats as they walk through a checkpoint.
The Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA) hopes to have a the initial prototype of its “tunnel-of-truth” Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) system ready for laboratory testing within about 18 months and a field-ready prototype within three years, Paul Benda, the director of the agency, told sister publication Homeland Security Report.
In Benda’s vision, a person would walk through the U-shaped, millimeter wave-based imaging system without stopping, a trip that would last about three seconds, and only be diverted for secondary screening if the targeting software detects an anomaly. Unlike the current millimeter wave-based AIT system deployed at U.S. airports today, L-3 Communications’ [LLL] ProVision, the next-generation technology would quickly obtain more images of a person and what items they may have in and underneath their clothing as they keep moving through the sensor field.
The ProVision system obtains an image of a person that stands still inside its AIT system, which quickly revolves around the person to complete the scan. The body scanner that HSARPA is developing would obtain 300 images of a person—assuming the transit through the system takes three seconds—from various angles and at different frequencies, allowing a person to leave their shoes and outerwear on and without a security officer having to look at the raw images, Benda said.
L-3’s ProVision system includes Automated Threat Recognition (ATR) software, which means security officers don’t look at raw images but are alerted to any anomalies beneath a person’s clothing. Current practice requires that people being screened remove their shoes and jackets before entering the system.
Benda said the HSARPA-sponsored system would feature steerable and multiple frequency beams, which will enable the gathering of a broad range of images through different materials and at different angles, which would help boost the ability of the ATR software to find threats hidden beneath clothing. The system would consist of flat panel sensors configured on three sides, and solid state electronics.
Benda estimates that the initial configuration of the U-shaped system could cost as low as $30,000, versus the $150,000 price of today’s systems, and have lower operations and maintenance costs due to the solid state electronics.
There is the potential for using a fourth panel that would be installed overhead to capture images of concealed objects that may be hidden beneath any headgear that people may wear, Benda said.
For its work, HSARPA is leveraging investments the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has made in compressive sensing, and is tapping into advances in information theory, meta-materials, antenna designs done for satellites and Wi-Fi receivers and commercially available technologies, Benda said.
HSARPA is working with Duke University on the AIT system it is developing. Duke, which has received funding from DARPA, is working on compressive sensing techniques, proprietary antenna designs and hardware to enable development of the system, Benda said. Compressive sensing is basically the “new, new math that allows you to gain information from very limited numbers of measurements,” he said.
Another way HSARPA is leveraging its partnership with DARPA is through industry days co-hosted by the two agencies in various areas. This is also helping the homeland security agency to “position ourselves as a transition partner for a lot of the DoD work being done in these fields,” Benda said.
The arrangement with Duke includes transitioning the ongoing work to industry. Toward this end, HSARPA is planning an industry day this August to transition work toward becoming a commercial product, according to Eric Houser, director of the Explosives Division within HSARPA.
DARPA has made $25 million in investments in mathematics and measurement theory that HSARPA is leveraging for its body scanner program and the agency expects to invest close to $7 million of its own funds in the effort. On top of that, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has invested about $4 million with plans to put forward upward of $6 million more, Benda said.
“We are pouring a lot of money into this because we do think this could change the face of aviation security,” Benda said. He added that if Congress provides the necessary funding in the FY ’14 budget, then the laboratory prototype will be ready next year.
In addition to AITs, HSARPA is also leveraging DARPA’s investments here in trace detection and X-ray systems, Houser said. The technology is “applicable across the entire aviation security enterprise,” Benda added.
If HSARPA is able to help bring forward this next-generation of AIT technology for industry to turn into products that security organizations like the TSA and others would purchase and deploy, it would go a long way toward achieving the long-term goal of the International Air Transport Association’s goal of a future checkpoint where most passengers just walk through security without stopping to divest even their carry-on bags. However, with HSARPA’s version of a “tunnel-of-truth,” passengers would still have their carry-on items screened by X-ray systems.
The agency is already working with one vendor of X-ray systems to incorporate the compressive sensing technique work from the DARPA-sponsored research, Benda said. This vendor has already seen a 60 percent drop in their false alarm rate, he said.
Benda didn’t disclose the name of the vendor but said they are working with X-ray diffraction technology. That means the company is probably Morpho Detection, Inc., a division of France’s Safran Group, which has sold X-ray diffraction systems to some airports around the world to aid in the secondary screening of checked bags.
Benda said that improvements to the X-ray systems at checkpoints are necessary to take advantage of the throughput advances HSARPA is trying to gain with its walk-through AIT system. The agency and its vendor are working to improve the X-ray diffraction technology to improve the image resolution and be able to identify the contents of the bag.
HSARPA would like to get the price point and throughput down for the X-ray diffraction technology so that it can be applicable to the checkpoint, Benda said. In addition, he wants to improve on the identification of liquids to be able to distinguish explosives from things like water or shampoo.
As with its goals for the next-generation AIT system, Houser said HSARPA plans to work toward commercializing the X-ray technology advances by “socializing” the lessons learned for industry. The agency has been building a “pipeline” of basic research done elsewhere and leveraging it to meet homeland security needs and bringing industry in sooner to let vendors better understand “where we’re going” and then sharing the technology so that industry can innovate with it, Benda added.
In addition to Duke, HSARPA is also leveraging expertise at Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Washington University of St. Louis, the Univ. of Arizona and University of California-Berkeley for work on the future checkpoint technology, Houser said.
Benda said he is confident that the improved X-ray diffraction technology will find its way into the field. Regarding the next-generation AIT technology, he said HSARPA still has challenging work ahead to work with the university community in helping to get that technology commercialized.