An illustration of the system developed to use WiFi signal to detect objects of different materials.
Invention Summary:
To help keep consumers safe, airports and many facilities deploy different kinds of screening equipment to scan baggage and other items. Traditional in-baggage suspicious object detection involves either manual examination (e.g., setting up checkpoint at every entrance) or dedicated equipment (e.g., surveillance camera, X-ray machine, ultra-wide-band scanner) and incurs high cost and deployment overhead, making them hard to scale.
Rutgers researchers have developed a low-cost system that utilizes off-the-shelf Wi-Fi devices to detect suspicious and dangerous objects. It uses wireless interference created by objects within the baggage to estimate the inner nature (i.e., material) and outline properties (i.e., dimension/shape) of the hidden objects. The system enables metal imaging or liquid detection by the reflected Wi-Fi signal translating into a facilitate risk level assessment to determine if an item is safe or dangerous. This system can achieve over 95% and 90% accuracy for identifying the suspicious object and determining its material type respectively.
Advantages:
- Uses WiFi to detect suspicious objects without physically opening baggage.
- Low implementation cost and easy deployment.
- Easily scalable to from large to small applications.
- Screens guns, ammunition, suspicious fluids
Market Applications:
This technology can be used for security screening purposes at:
- Schools
- Airports and point of entries such as ports, border controls
- Theme parks and Stadiums
- Metro & train stations
Intellectual Property & Development Status:
