Produced by Thru Vision Systems, the TS4 device under trial at both Sydney and Melbourne airports is 100 per cent radiation free. It’s essentially a magnet for Tera-Hertz energy emitted by both passengers and the objects they carry and, by detecting it, can highlight the presence of potentially harmful materials, including liquid explosives.
While controversial millimeter wave and back-scatter x-ray technologies have been deployed across the US airport scene en masse, they haven’t yet been adopted in Australia on a widespread basis. The country is set to put a handful into service, but they’ll only be used in extreme circumstances.
Tera-Hertz Airport Scanner Trials
Compared to these machines, Thru-vision's TS4 scanner – as now being used in the Australian trials - could offer airports several advantages. For one thing, it doesn’t require passengers to stand still while a check’s being performed. Rather, it analyses them while they’re in motion and this aspect could realistically reduce passenger waiting times and speed up the whole process from initial airport entrance to the point aircraft leave the runway.
The TS4 passenger scanner can also handle multiple subjects at one time while, cost-wise, it’s reported to be in the region of 50 per cent cheaper than other airport scanning designs.
Additionally, it has size and weight on its side and doesn’t necessarily have to be placed at ground level: the option’s there to wall or ceiling-mount it, if required. Probably the most controversial aspect of the full-body scanners in use at airports both in the US and beyond is the degree to which they capture the human body in detail, prompting many to complain on privacy grounds. It’s important to realize that the TS4 doesn’t obtain individual body images in the same way, but rather, their energy.
TS4 Airport Passenger Scanner
‘Terahertz waves occupy part of the electromagnetic spectrum between radio waves and infra-red”, Thru-vision explained in a press release on the TS4 airport passenger scanner issued in 2010, adding these waves are ‘...naturally produced all of the time by all objects and people.
‘Thru-vision Systems’ products only receive, they do not transmit. Thru-vision Systems’ products do not illuminate people with any radiation such as X-rays or millimeter wave microwaves. The products provide imaging solutions for real time use on people either close-by or at distance, indoors and out.’
Airport International will present further coverage of this passenger scanning technology in future News Items.
