Trials of two digital security scanners produced by German manufacturer Rohde & Schwarz have begun at Zurich Airport. The long-term plan is to equip all security checkpoints at the airport with the new technology.
Flughafen Zürich AG is currently testing two R&S QPS201 security scanners. They are in use on two of a total of 26 passenger-screening lanes in the security inspection building. During the trial phase, the new devices will not replace conventional metal detectors, instead serving as supplementary inspection devices. Passengers stand in the security scanner for a short time, while possible threats on their body are displayed on a standardized digital avatar without revealing personal attributes.
The Rohde & Schwarz security scanner is attractive due to its market-leading safety performance combined with high efficiency and intuitive operation for passengers. The scanner works with millimeter-wave technology. It renders the captured image data anonymous, while also analyzing it in order to detect prohibited items on passengers quickly and accurately. The automatic detection function is based on AI algorithms that aim to identify a wide range of object classes of all materials, such as metals, liquids, ceramics, plastics, granulates, powders, organic substances and much more, with extremely low false alarm rates. This reduces the effort required by security personnel for manual follow-up inspections.
This Rohde & Schwarz technology has been proving its worth in the aviation industry since 2015, with over 1,000 scanners already in use at airports worldwide. They are approved by the European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC), the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and many other national authorities.
