SET Corp. to marry radar-imaging to gait recognition technology
Virginia company’s CounterBomber is proven effective at identifying hidden weapons on moving individuals; addition of gait recognition will allow constant surveillance of suspects, as well as point out a few new ones as well
As our mothers told us, “if one is good, two is better.” Such is certainly the case with homeland security, where double-factor authentication and multi-layered airport regimes — often relying on two simple but strong technologies — win the day over high-tech single-technology approaches. But what happens if two seemingly-futuristic systems are married? That is what Virgina-based SET Corporation — founded four years ago by scientists from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — is trying to figure out, hoping that the company’s weapons-detecting radar imaging will work well with the gait recognition biometrics the company is also developing.
SET’s new radar-imaging technology (known as CounterBomber) expected to reach markets later this year, uses low-power radar beams — effective at fifty yards or more away— to reveal concealed objects hidden on a person’s body. “The characteristics of the reflected radar beam are affected by weapons hidden beneath the clothing,” says CEO Thomas Burns. This is a strong technology, but gait recognition makes it even stronger. “We have clearly made a link between humans carrying things with them and the corresponding changes in their walking pattern,” said Rama Chellappa of the University of Maryland. “We see differences in the way people walk when they strap even 15 pounds to their ankle, but it’s a very subtle thing.”
The same technology is also extremely effective at tracking people through crowds. “By incorporating Rama’s full gait-recognition technology in the next generation of our system, we will be able to combine evidence both from the radar and the video sensors to improve our discrimination performance,” Burns says.
-read more in Karen Nitkin’s Technology Review report
