Chairman, President and CEO, Prof. Zhiqiang CHEN, Nuctech
UV-C disinfection technology has been quickly trialed and deployed in many airports as a short- and long-term measures to address the heighted needs for hygiene standard, which can automate the cleaning of checkpoint trays during their return from the end to the front of checkpoint lane and kill 99% of bacteria attached on trays.
Approved by ECAC at EDSCB standard C3, CT scanner, ever increasing deployment in Asia, Europe and North America in recent years, can enable liquids and laptops to be left inside passenger bags with its powerful material discrimination capability, reducing the numbers of trays needed and less contact among passengers, staff and the surface of trays. Moreover, its high throughput could help airports maintain a steady passenger flow and make it easier to avoid any congregation of people.
During the pre-pandemic, millimeter wave body scanners have been employed by many airports as an alternative to metal detector, not only improving detection of non-metal items, but also enabling a targeted secondary search by highlighting the position of concealment under clothing on a generic figure. After years of evolution, stand-off body scanning technologies, such as Terahertz technology, has come into the reality in reaching security and safety, help fighting against both terrorist threat and COVID-19 in multiple scenarios.
Automated lanes are already providing greater throughput and less queuing, potentially reshaping the security paradigm in airport when paired with CT scanner and millimeter-wave body scanner in particularly. It could transport the baggage trays automatically, eliminating the need for airport staff to move them back and forth manually, while allowing for multiple passengers with their parallel preparation to speed-up the throughput of the checkpoint. Furthermore, the multiplexing technology brings the central image processing (CIP) to the checkpoint, which allows security staff, previously confined to the scanner, to be transferred to a remote and quiet place away from the hustle and bustle of checkpoints, ensuring social distancing is properly observed between passengers and staff.
Artificial Intelligence and robotization
Disrupting technologies, such as AI, robot, etc. will find their places in aviation to improve automation, mobility and agility. The progress in Artificial Intelligence (AI) has led to transformation of detection technologies and security process in a holistic way. AI-enabled algorithms have greatly improved the capabilities of millimeter wave body scanners and CT scanners in automatic recognition of objects. With more data ingested, it could train itself and evolve into low false alarm rates. A robot-based disinfection system could cover 750 cubic meters in a single run with the disinfection fog and mist. It can work around the clock with steady performance and be automatically recharged during intervals of its operation, reducing the staff’s load in overburdened manual disinfection work.
In a word, the ongoing pandemic presents aviation industry a unique opportunity to adapt quickly to ‘new normal’ and redesign a secure, safe and healthy experience to restoring passenger experience, an important way to recovery from the pandemic.
