Scanners to spot hidden knives and reduce unnecessary police searches (2019)

ntu.ac.uk

1 pointbsdz3 comments

This is interesting now as it's a hot topic in the UK. The government claims this technology will finally be in use next year [1]. Apparently, it can detect concealed knives (even under heavy clothing) from 6 metres away using ordinary cameras combined with "electromagnetic infrared waves and a unique computer algorithm" [2]. I imagine this could be used to detect other types of metal weapons used more prominently in other countries.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68085532

[2] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/knives-crackdown-zo...

Is there a report that shows a real image of the device. I guess the nice photo in the article is fake.

Also, how common are false positives? Like cell phones, a bunch of keys, small spray with medicine, ...

Not that I've been able to locate. Although, here's some interesting images of concealed knives using infrared:

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Automatic-detection-of...

I imagine coupling this information with data from a small magnetometer might build a sharper composite image.

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