SBIR-STTR Award

Modern On-Person Screening technology has enabled higher levels of security and more flexible screening of persons in Airport Checkpoint environments. While these advances have enabled higher throughput and security, they underlying technology assumes a level of mobility not applicable to all passengers. It is proposed that using data-driven intelligent algorithms, cutting edge On-Person Screening technology ready for deployment can also be enabled to robustly screen passengers of limited mobility in a gender agnostic fashion without requiring divestiture of wheelchairs or other mobility aids.The Thruvision CPC16 is an On Person Screening system based on Passive TeraHertz technology that can detect non divested items at a distance of up to 12 ft. Analytical AI has developed the. artificial intelligence algorithms for this system for full mobility passenger and aim as part of this proposal to extend that capability as a proof of concept to limited mobility passengers.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) operates security screening for all air passengers of outgoing aircraft. The Air Carrier Access Act of 1986 (ACAA) ensured access to air travel for passengers with disabilities, including mandating equal or similar treatment in the screening process. This ACAA requirement comports with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) which prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities in employment, transporation, public accomodations, communications, and access to state and local government programs and services.Despite these requirements, due to technology limitations, screening practices for individuals with mobility limitations and disabilities currently involves an intrusive manual pat-down.Manual screening is much slower than the automated screening of passengers via non-ionizing radiation, and is particularly uncomfortable and intrusive for individuals requiring wheelchairs.. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to eliminate the disparity in screening processes between disabled and non-disabled passengers.In a Phase I SBIR, Analytical AI (AAI) proposed and demonstrated improvements automated screening of limited mobility passengers using passive TeraHertz (THz) technology by innovating on an Automated Threat Recognition (ATR) algorithm developed initially for full mobility passengers. For Phase II, AAI will transition this effort to work with active millimeter wave technology, which is more commonly in use within airport environments. AAI is comprised of a multi-disciplinary team with extensive experience in high-performance computing and software integration. AAI develops novel AI solutions designed specifically to integrate with customer preferred software and run rapidly on hardware appropriate to the application.