Handheld Device Detects Movement Through Walls

Actually there is a thermal scan that can be used to show people in a building. Not sure that it is a hand held size but was actually tossed about in congress on privacy issues. You may want to do a story on that one as well. A Hollywood movie done in the 80′s about a top of the line helicopter (movie name escapes me now) revealed it and it has apparently been drastically improved over the years.

Not a bad idea for a story… though unless I am mistaken, such infrared (thermal) devices are limited in what materials they can see through. It has to be a medium which will allow the infrared energy to pass though, such as drywall or glass. Brick, metal, or concrete would probably prevent such a device from picking anything up.

But I could be wrong.

Arcangel said: “A Hollywood movie done in the 80′s about a top of the line helicopter (movie name escapes me now) revealed it and it has apparently been drastically improved over the years.”

Embarrassed to admit it, but I believe I know the name of that movie: Blue Thunder (1983)

A great gadget—now you can tell who’s in the bathroom (too long) and what they’re doing.

Alan Bellows said: “Not a bad idea for a story… though unless I am mistaken, such infrared (thermal) devices are limited in what materials they can see through. It has to be a medium which will allow the infrared energy to pass though, such as drywall or glass. Brick, metal, or concrete would probably prevent such a device from picking anything up.

But I could be wrong.”

That would be true for the thermal imaging cameras that I have worked with. After leaving of the Air Force, I took a job in the Metrology field with an electric utility at one of their nuclear power plants. They used thermal imaging cameras made by Agema and Inframetrics to measure the temperature of the hydrogen igniters and surface temperatures from a distance. If you remember the original movie Predator, the view they used from the predator’s eyes was taken with an Inframetrics thermal imaging camera. While we couldn’t see through walls we could see a large temperature difference in the surface temperature of the wall indicating something just on the other side was very hot. I believe fire departments use this technology to determine if there is a fire in the next room before entering.

Pardon my ignorance, but is this a thermal imager? I thought those things needed a fairly substantial cooling unit in order to operate. This thingy seems more in the radar range.(hee hee, a pun for us oldsters) Although it does seem awfully small for a radar tranciever as well, but I’ve been out of the radar business (I was a radar and radio tech. on C-130′s in the early ’90′s) for quite some time.

Marius said: “Pardon my ignorance, but is this a thermal imager? I thought those things needed a fairly substantial cooling unit in order to operate. This thingy seems more in the radar range.(hee hee, a pun for us oldsters) Although it does seem awfully small for a radar tranciever as well, but I’ve been out of the radar business (I was a radar and radio tech. on C-130′s in the early ’90′s) for quite some time.”

You are correct Marius. We got on the subject of the thermal imaging camera from the first comment by Arcangel. As you know the higher the frequency, the shorter the wave length and I would guess the smaller the components can be. Based on the size, it still must be some low power technology.

While I was in the Air Force (late 70′s early 80′s) I calibrated AN/URM 141 radar test sets. Did you use them? They were pretty old back then.

Keep in mind though that civilian technology is seven to thirty years behind much off-the-shelf military technology. Take into account that DARPA, DOD, NSA and a whole bunch of other lettered organizations have their black-budget stuff as well. By all rights though, it wouldn’t fare well for national defense if they gave up R&D for stuff off the racks at the local Sam’s Club. (Personally I still find it truly amusing that people are surprised that the NSA monitors domestic-to-international calls and actually taps people’s phones when their number shows up on a terrorist’s Palm Pilot. Hellloooooo… what part of “spy agency” did you miss?)

Would this device penetrate snow? If so, how far could it see? If it can detect someone under 2 meters of snow, it could be very useful for quickly locating avalanche victims.

MeasureMan said: “If you remember the original movie Predator, the view they used from the predator’s eyes was taken with an Inframetrics thermal imaging camera.”

Not wanting to be too picky, but I just thought I’d note: The *plan* had been to use a thermal imaging camera for the predator’s vision. But it was rather impractical: “this enormous thing with an umbilical that was 6 inches thick, that could get maybe 4 feet from the truck”, to quote the director. Horrible to use in a hilly jungle location, and the actors were about the same temperature as the background, making them perfectly camoflaged. So McTiernan secretly (behind the backs of the exectives and producers) went off to a video special-effects studio, and played around with false colour on the standard (visibible light) film instead.

Not sure if any genuine heat-vision made it into the film. ..I’ve been listening to the directors commentary on the DVD recently, so I thought I’d share. :)

Well done, TKO. That is a very good application for such technology.

TKO said: “Not wanting to be too picky, but I just thought I’d note: The *plan* had been to use a thermal imaging camera for the predator’s vision. But it was rather impractical: “this enormous thing with an umbilical that was 6 inches thick, that could get maybe 4 feet from the truck”, to quote the director. Horrible to use in a hilly jungle location, and the actors were about the same temperature as the background, making them perfectly camoflaged. So McTiernan secretly (behind the backs of the exectives and producers) went off to a video special-effects studio, and played around with false colour on the standard (visibible light) film instead.

Not sure if any genuine heat-vision made it into the film. ..I’ve been listening to the directors commentary on the DVD recently, so I thought I’d share. :)”

WOW! That is interesting. When the predator look at people, they looked just like the image on an Inframetrics imaging system. Must have been a big secret, they still put Inframetrics Inc. in the credits. 1987 was a long time ago and I was second guessing myself so I looked up the cast information. They are listed under Other Companies near the bottom of the page.

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1800107656/cast

The system we used was mounted to a two wheel hand cart and the camera itself was mounted to the top of one of the handles. The whole system we pretty compact. When I saw the movie effects and Inframetrics was listed in the credits, I had thought they were using the same system we had. Thanks for the correction.

MeasureMan said: “You are correct Marius. We got on the subject of the thermal imaging camera from the first comment by Arcangel. As you know the higher the frequency, the shorter the wave length and I would guess the smaller the components can be. Based on the size, it still must be some low power technology.

While I was in the Air Force (late 70′s early 80′s) I calibrated AN/URM 141 radar test sets. Did you use them? They were pretty old back then.”

I’m not familiar with the device, but then once I got out of tech. school it was pretty much swaptronics. Take out the bad box, put in a good one, then send the whole thing to the shop where the those guys released the magic smoke from the components. :-)

MeasureMan said: “WOW! That is interesting. When the predator looked at people, they looked just like the image on an Inframetrics imaging system.”

Yeah. I’m guessing that, after they’d done the deal with Inframetrics for the equipment, and given it was McTiernan’s first big movie (short leash and all that), it was easiest to pretend it was genuine heat-vision footage, and give them the credit for it.

MeasureMan said: “The system we used was mounted to a two wheel hand cart and the camera itself was mounted to the top of one of the handles. The whole system we pretty compact. When I saw the movie effects and Inframetrics was listed in the credits, I had thought they were using the same system we had. Thanks for the correction.”

Maybe they had an earlier, less portable version? Possibly the director was exaggerating a bit when he described its restrictions. ..Really good to know the effect they created looked convincing to someone familiar with the equipment. (Had I thought much about it, they probably did have to do a good fake to keep Inframetrics happy.)

TKO said:
Maybe they had an earlier, less portable version? Possibly the director was exaggerating a bit when he described its restrictions. ..Really good to know the effect they created looked convincing to someone familiar with the equipment. (Had I thought much about it, they probably did have to do a good fake to keep Inframetrics happy.)”

I was just thinking, to put the image on the big movie screen they would have needed a much higher resolution camera system. If the image from our system was put on a movie screen, it would look like the Atari 2600 “Gunfighter” game. The effect could be sold in a boardroom using a small system, but when the required system was delivered….. WOW! ….What happened to the cute little camera we saw in the demo?

Here is the article by the company that has the DARPA contract:

http://www.cyterra.com/radar/through-wall.html

It is based on a combination of “Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and Metal Detector (MD) technology.” However, it also states that “A small halo of infrared light projected around the sensor head enables covert night operations.”, implying that infrared light (from sun/light/body heat?) is required for operation. Interesting.

http://www.cyterra.com/countermine/an-pss-14.html

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) had developed a new handheld device which can detect movements as subtle as breathing through concrete walls up to twelve inches thick.

I may be wrong, but shouldn’t that “had” be “has”?

But will it detect something moving in an overhead vent.

The movie Arcangel is refering to is (probably) Blue Thunder.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085255/

Rod Steiger in “Blue Thunder”; … “All technology depicted in this film is already in use”. When citizen’s needs become as important as Pentagon game plans, Search and Rescue will have the benefit of this technology.