Explosives present an ongoing risk today, whether on the battlefield, city streets, or around high-value targets like airports. Although a range of technologies for explosives detection exists, many of them involve expensive, fragile, large-frame instruments that require training to operate.
When RedXDefense set out to develop a handheld field unit to detect various hazardous materials, it focused on designing a fast, rugged, and easy-to-use device targeted for operation by soldiers or dockworkers, not scientists.
Once the unit is returned to the housing and automatically rotated, it is sprayed with a special contrast-enhancing ink. Ultraviolet illumination reveals black spots that indicate explosives residue.
The XPAK uses fluorescence detection technology to detect a wide variety of explosives, ranging from TNT and C4 to ammonium nitrate. The unit contains a removable baton wrapped with specially treated paper. The user swipes the baton over the material being tested or has a suspect wrap his or her fingers around it, then reinserts it in the aperture. Inside the XPAK, the baton rotates as a nozzle and sprays it evenly with a contrast-enhancing ink. For readout, the user looks into a viewfinder as the baton again rotates, this time under an ultraviolet light. Dark spots against a bright blue background on the paper indicate a positive result.
In the initial design, users rotated the baton manually. The approach worked, but results varied from sample to sample and operator to operator. When the RedX engineering team set out to design the next-generation product, the XPAK G2, it decided to automate the ink-application process. Motorizing the rotation of the baton was the obvious solution.
The initial model could detect a range of basic explosives, but emerging explosives require a more sophisticated approach. In the XPAK G2, the sample needs to be excited by an energy source after application of the ink, but that expectation has to be easily distributed, and over a specified time span. Automation provided a way to improve consistency.
Wow, this is really cool. I've done some research on explosive detection and actually helped build an <a href="http://www.securityproductsolutions.com/explosive-detector.html">explosive detector</a> kinda like this one, just not as nice..lol It's amazing how far technology is taking this field.
You are correct. The XPAK is very effective in detecting Military Grade Explosives and also Homemade Explosives. We can teach users to effectively detect explosives in a couple hours and since the system has no warm up time or calibration requirement, it's ready when needed. Deploying large numbers of systems will help gather intelligence on individuals involved in bomb-making activities. We need to be offensive when dealing with this threat. Thanks for your comments.
Thanks for the kind comments. I always get a kick out of talking to engineers about the process – reminds me of my days on the other side of the table.
To your question about sensors, the unitactually makes use of an external biologicalsensor – the human eye. The paper has a coating that, when sprayed with the contrast-enhancing ink and irradiated in the UV, demonstrates color change in the presence of explosive materials. The user looks in the viewfinder -- if we see dark patches, they know there is something amiss.
As far as I am aware, there is no additional sensor. They could probably easily rig one up with a linear CMOS image sensor coupled with some sort of a graphics processor chip, but that would increase size, cost, and detection time. The focus for these guys was to develop a simple, robust, cost-effective unit that would provide near-real-time results at checkpoints, etc. It's a clever bit of minimalist engineering, I'd say.
Kristin, I think this hand held explosive detectors is very helpful to cops, who are serving in sensitive areas. We know that now a day's terrorism is a major headache for almost all governments/countries, where suspicious materials like TNT are using widely for Bomb blasts. I hope this machine can help the cops for an early detection of TNT presence.
This is a story in the old tradition of Design News -- where the writers would get into the heads of the engineers and reveal their thought processes as they stepped through the design. Nice job by the author. I am curious, though: What kind of sensor is used for an application like this?
I agree Ann and Beth, this is scary. So I'm all the more glad to see this product. Anything we can do to make attacks less likely and to make attacks less harmful is good news. Tools like this could have the effect of discouraging the use of explosives.
I agree, it's unfortunate that the design of this detector is necessary. But I'm sure glad to see it, and it will no doubt come in very handy. Getting the motors' weight down while still providing enough torque looks like it was quite a challenge. I like the addition of a sensor.
Scary that we have to think about ruggedizing and packaging a handheld explosives dectector so that it is sturdy enough to use on the job as opposed to in controlled, scientific environments. Scary state of the world, but I suppose a harsh reality. It was interesting to follow the logic of their various design choices as they took a technology and tried to make it more commercially viable.
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