Rohde & Schwarz (R&S) has announced that trials of two of its QPS201 digital security scanners have begun at Zurich Airport.
According to the company, the long-term plan is to equip all security checkpoints at the airport with the new technology.
Airport security
R&S says that the security scanners are in use on two of a total of 26 passenger-screening lanes in the security inspection building.
During the trial phase, the new devices will not replace conventional metal detectors, instead serving as supplementary inspection devices.
Passengers stand in the security scanner for a short time, while possible threats on their body are displayed on a standardised digital avatar without revealing personal attributes.
The scanner works with millimeter-wave technology and renders the captured image data anonymous, while also analyzing it in order to detect prohibited items on passengers quickly and accurately.
R&S says that the automatic detection function is based on AI algorithms that aim to identify a wide range of object classes of all materials, such as metals, liquids, ceramics, plastics, granulates, powders, organic substances and much more, with extremely low false alarm rates.
This reduces the effort required by security personnel for manual follow-up inspections.
