By Calvin Biesecker
Rapiscan Systems and Brijot Imaging Systems have signed a seven-year agreement that allows Rapiscan to market and sell Brijot’s passive millimeter wave screening body scanner that is capable of screening individuals from several meters away.
Under the arrangement, Rapiscan will put its own label on Brijot’s BIS-WDS GEN 2 screener, calling it the Rapiscan WaveScan 200. Adding the millimeter wave sensor to its product portfolio, which consists of a wide array of X-Ray systems for scanning people and parcels at airports, and cargo, containers and vehicles at various ports of entry, will allow Rapiscan to offer its customers another screening option as well as layered solutions using a combination of X-Ray and millimeter wave systems.
“What we’ve always tried to do is package the product portfolio in a broad enough brush so that we’re not pigeonholing customers into a singular type of technology because we don’t necessarily feel that a given technology is right for all applications,” Peter Williamson, executive vice president for worldwide sales and marketing at Rapiscan, told Defense Daily yesterday.
Rapiscan is the security division of OSI Systems [OSIS].
The non-exclusive agreement is certainly a positive for Brijot as it instantly gives the company access to a worldwide sales, distribution and service network that it lacks. Moreover, given Rapiscan’s belief that the millimeter wave technology is worthy of adding to its product portfolio, the agreement is a plus for the millimeter wave sensor industry, which has been marketing and demonstrating its screening systems with increasing regularity the past couple of years.
There has been a “groundswell of activity and interest” in millimeter wave technology the last two years across different market segments, such as aviation, defense, the commercial sector, and more, and across geographic regions, Williamson said. “I think you’ve got a lot of people out there from a customer standpoint waiting to see how good the technology can be from an imaging standpoint, from a probability of detection…And for those areas where throughput, privacy and other issues are of primary concern for the customer, this provides a more than adequate technological solution for them.”
Brijot has delivered and sold about 200 of its passive millimeter screening systems, including the BIS-WDS GEN 2 and an earlier version of the system. The system can detect weapons, explosives and contraband hidden under a person’s clothing without outlining personal body parts, which makes the technology palatable from a privacy perspective. Customers include the private sector, the Defense Department, the United Kingdom and Israel.
Based on how sales go and future customer requirements evolve, the agreement between the two firms allows for co-development work.