Metal detectors, X-ray machines, and dogs are used at security checkpoints to look for bombs. Now a next-generation technology under development in Cambridge will look for the bomber.
With funding from the US Department of Homeland Security, Draper Laboratory and other collaborators are building technology to detect potential terrorists with cameras and noninvasive sensors that monitor eye blinks, heart rate, and even fidgeting.
The project, called the “Future Attribute Screening Technology,’’ is aimed at allowing security checkpoint personnel at airports or large public events to make better, faster decisions about whether a person should get follow-up screening.
At a demonstration of the technology this week, project manager Robert P. Burns said the idea is to track a set of involuntary physiological reactions that might slip by a human observer. These occur when a person harbors malicious intent - but not when someone is late for a flight or annoyed by something else, he said, citing years of research into the psychology of deception.
The development team is investigating how effective its techniques are at flagging only people who intend to do harm. Even if it works, the technology raises a slew of questions - from privacy concerns, to the more fundamental issue of whether machines are up to a task now entrusted to humans.
“I know what they’re doing, and I’m ambivalent,’’ said Paul Ekman, a consultant on the project and an eminent psychologist who pioneered the study of facial expression and emotion.
“I can understand why there’s an attempt being made to find a way to replace or improve on what human observers can do: the need is vast, for a country as large and porous as we are. However, I’m by no means convinced that any technology, any hardware will come close to doing what a highly trained human observer can do,’’ said Ekman, who directs a company that trains government workers, including for the Transportation Security Administration, to detect suspicious behavior.
The researchers hope to have the device ready for field testing in 2011, perhaps at a border crossing. If it works - even Burns concedes that’s no sure thing - it could be used by government agencies. There are no immediate plans for commercializing the technology, which has cost about $20 million to develop.
At the demonstration, actors walked one-by-one into a room with a metal detector, a guard, and a set of sensors that monitored their reactions while they spent a few minutes answering a dozen questions, ranging from where they lived to whether they planned to detonate a device.
Most of the system’s sensors are commercially available. An eye tracker measures blinks, gaze direction, and pupil dilation. Two separate devices track heart rate and respiration. A thermal camera measures the way heat changes on a person’s face. And underfoot, an accessory normally used with the
