UPDATE
The RADAR Flashlight
Device detects respiration up to three meters away, with no physical connection between subject and radar.
By Lea McLees
photo by Stanley Leary
Despite barriers such as walls,
the RADAR flashlight can discern the presence of another human being.
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A prototype RADAR flashlight that can detect a human's presence through walls and doors could one day be used by police officers, prison guards and others to make their jobs safer.
The device, for which a provisional patent application has been filed, uses a radar and a specialized signal processor to detect movement. The RADAR flashlight discerns respiration from up to three meters away, with no physical connection between subject and radar.
The development is part of a family of technologies that detects heartbeat, says Gene Greneker of the Georgia Tech Research Institute.
"Based on respiration signature alone, the RADAR flashlight allows us to detect a stationary individual behind a solid wooden door, or standing four feet behind an eight-inch block wall," says Greneker, a principal research scientist in the Sensors and Electromagnetic Applications Laboratory. "This makes the flashlight potentially useful to police officers in ambush situations, and to prison guards doing bed checks."
The Tech-funded project uses a radar beam of 15 to 20 degrees to detect movement generated by breathing.
Additional potential applications include:
locating people during a hostage
situation, based on movement or radar respiration signature; immobilized
people could be located via respiration signature alone.
finding survivors in the rubble of
earthquakes or accidents.
photo courtesy Gene Greneker
Greneker
plans to fit all components inside the flashlight housing
by incorporating high-speed signal processing technology.
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The amount of electromagnetic radiation exposure from the
flashlight is very small — 10 times less than the maximum exposure
leakage level for microwave ovens — about the same amount of
exposure a person receives when walking under an automatic door opener.
The signal processor currently is outside the flashlight-sized casing, and the respiration signature is displayed on a monitor. Greneker plans to make everything small enough to fit inside the flashlight housing.
The RADAR flashlight has advantages over other technologies. The signal penetrates clothes, and it requires a body movement of only a few millimeters to detect human presence.
Further information is available from Gene Greneker, Sensors
and Electromagnetic Applications Laboratory, Georgia Tech Research
Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332-0856.
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Last updated: Dec. 3, 1997