The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate in the past month has awarded small contracts to two high-technology start-ups that have developed video analytics software for commercial applications with the goal to apply the technology to potential passenger self-screening systems at airport checkpoints.
The awards to Lauretta AI and Deep North are for just under $200,000 each and were made through S&T’s Silicon Valley Innovation Program (SVIP), which taps into commercial research and development companies that have developed technology with potential government applications and rapidly award them contracts.
In late 2019, S&T, working with the Transportation Security Administration, initiated an effort aimed at exploring the development of passenger self-screening portals or kiosks, giving travelers space to divest certain carry-on items while they are being screened to save time, and enhance security and the screening experience.
Potential Awards Ahead
The self-screening effort has matured beyond a concept and now S&T is hoping to make awards in the coming months to companies for entire system concepts that could ultimately lead to designing, developing and potentially prototyping integrated self-screening prototypes in the next two to four years, John Fortune, S&T’s program manager for the Screening at Speed program, tells HSR this month. Any awards here will be through a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) S&T issued last summer.
The challenge of a self-screening portal that is able to scan a travelers’ carry-on bags and the individuals themselves is daunting, Fortune says. TSA is slowly transitioning its checkpoint baggage scanning to computed tomography-based systems, which are fairly large and take up more room than the current X-Ray scanners. The agency uses separate Advanced Imaging Technology machines to screen most travelers for potential threat items that may be hidden beneath their clothing.
“Those two systems alone might cost you $500,000 per portal, so there is a challenge in designing these nice self-contained portals and if you want to put six or eight of those in a checkpoint, can you do that?” Fortune said. “Is it cost effective? Could you even shrink the form-factor down?”
Currently, there isn’t a single company that can build an entire self-screening portal without partnering with other companies, Fortune says.
For what Fortune says that overall is a “small dollar value,” S&T is poking at the “art of the possible” in the self-screening effort, adding that TSA has “a lot of buy in right now” on this.
The recent six-month early-stage research and development awards to California-based Deep North and Singapore-based Lauretta AI are separate from the self-screening BAA and were made through an SVIP solicitation seeking technologies to respond to and mitigate impacts from COVID-19. S&T is working through Lauretta AI’s U.S. office in Massachusetts.
Under the Phase 1 awards, Fortune says he’s looking for the companies to demonstrate their technologies “in our use case” for self-screening in a laboratory environment.
If S&T likes what it sees from the initial awards to one or both companies, they can be awarded phase 2 contracts for six more months of work. Under the SVIP program, awards can be made for four phases. Fortune says until the companies’ platforms can be tested against DHS’ planned use case, he doesn’t know how they will work and how to move forward from there.
Fortune credited the SVIP program for enabling him to broaden the reach of his Screening at Speed effort, providing him access to contractors that he otherwise might not have been aware of for checkpoint screening.
Video Governing
Fortune says the smart video algorithms the companies have developed could be used to enforce social distancing between passengers to strengthen public health safety and also enable the self-screening systems developed by other vendors. These analytics can be used to provide cues for people that need help and also ensure that they comply with the required procedures as they are screened, he says.
“The whole process is likely video governed on some level” during the self-screening by passengers, he says.
In earlier responses to information requests and the BAA for self-screening, Fortune says “one of the things we weren’t necessarily seeing through our other channels were how was this whole thing going to be refereed? How to run the system? How are we going to make sure the people are queued up and are going in in an appropriate fashion and how are we making sure if they’re struggling then maybe there’s a cue to a Transportation Security Officer to come give an assist?”
Deep North and Lauretta AI both use artificial intelligence technology to anonymously monitor people and both companies have a “great track record working in the private sector,” Fortune says. S&T says that Deep North’s technology has been commercially successful in the travel and telecommunications industries and Lauretta AI’s with the airline, real estate, construction and retail sectors.
Fortune says that the investments in self-screening, regardless of what is ultimately developed, could benefit other portions of the Screening at Speed program and “vice-versa,” pointing out that the projects he’s overseeing are not siloed from one another.