Liberty Defense received a nearly $1.8 million contract from the Transportation Security Administration to develop a prototype upgrade kit to improve the detection performance and reduce the false alarm rates of the agency’s advanced imaging technology (AIT) body scanners.
The ultimate goals of the upgrade are to improve security, increase passenger throughput and reduce physical contact for passengers.
TSA said this month in a contract notice that the kits “are meant to provide and allow the reduction of outerwear investment, improve detection and enabling material discrimination, utilize superior lateral resolution that supports improved imaging of object edges resolution, and achieve improved detection and false alarm reduction, all in order to improve throughput at the checkpoints.”
TSA redacted the value of the award in its notice but Liberty disclosed it in a press release.
The company says its high-definition (HD) AIT solution includes high-definition imaging and artificial intelligence. TSA said the wide band upgrade kits will be certified, demonstrated and tested for future fielding of approved kits throughout its AIT fleet.
Testing is targeted for late in the second quarter or early third quarter of 2024, Bill Frain, Liberty’s CEO, told HSR. There is still some development being done then the hardware has to be optimized for commercialization, he said.
The agency said that it needs to test the HD-AIT kit technology on fielded AIT systems in an operational environment to determine suitability for field use. The test is a critical step in approving the HD-AIT enhancements to the AIT fleet.
TSA also said that the results of the test will be used to develop next-generation AIT requirements. The agency plans to develop a new procurement strategy for next-generation AIT requirements to allow for competition.
The vast majority of AIT systems—more than 1,000—operated by TSA were supplied by Leidos [LDOS]. The agency also operates a small number of the body scanners supplied by Rohde & Schwarz.
“Liberty shares the same mission as TSA for on-person screening and deploying future state capability, with the focus on detecting more threats and providing an overall better experience for the traveling public,” Frain said in a statement.
Liberty’s HD-AIT system is based on technology developed by and licensed from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
TSA said it continues to work with as many industry partners as possible to mature open architecture sensors that are compatible with the HD-AIT architecture. The agency said a Targeted Broad Agency Announcement it issued in May 2021 sought innovative concepts from vendors supporting open architecture and has resulted in two awards.