British engineers have succeeded in developing a new airport scanner that could make the security check process for passengers far quicker. Currently on trial at 65 airports including Heathrow and Gatwick, Insight100 is capable of analysing liquid contents in bottles within 5 seconds, and the bottle doesn’t even have to be opened!
How many of us decant our favourite perfume or our liquid make-up remover into tiny clear bottles to carry on to an airplane? Then there’s the procedure of hand luggage being checked and the lengthy queues at security gates, not to mention the endless pile of liquids and potions that have been confiscated, many of which are quite expensive… It’s become part of the travelling procedure! But this latest technology, which has been shortlisted for the prestigious MacRobert engineering award, could mean that there is an end in sight to this misery!
Oxfordshire-based, engineers at Cobalt Light Systems have used a Rahman spectroscopy laser to determine the chemical composition of liquids by analysing scattered light and identifying patterns made by the different elements in non-metallic containers, as big as 3 litres in some cases, without the need to open them, and is able to separate all harmless elements with those that can potentially be used to make bombs, such as hydrogen peroxide… and all this in just 5 seconds!
The task for decanting liquids into clear bottles of 100ml or less has been with us since 2006, following the attempt to bomb trans-Atlantic flights. Stansted confiscates enough of these bottles to fill 20 large bins yearly, and Heathrow is even worse – upto 2,000 tonnes a year! It’s about time something came along to significantly reduce these ‘bottle mountains’, and put us out of our security check misery!
The Rahman spectroscopy method has been used to identify solid materials for quite a while, but Cobalt have managed to use the technology to identify different liquid elements, raising the hopes of many that normality could soon return to airport security checks, and eventually remove the current hand luggage liquid ban. According to the Royal Academy of Engineering, because the technology is reliable and the false alarm rate is so low, there could also be a significant reduction in the cost of missed flights, delays and the additional personnel currently required… If that’s the case, let’s see if it’s passed down the line to reduced flight costs! Either way, Insight100 is a welcome addition to our airports.