This security machine might replace your local TSA agent
Welcome to the future: Where airport security screeners are … machines.
The Palo Alto-based startup Qylur has come up with a device it claims will replace some of the humans who check for threats at airports.
The Qylatron has been tested at Liberty State Park, an airport in Rio de Janeiro and a stadium in the U.S. The first of the screening machines will be deployed early next year. The company has not yet announced its commercial customers.
In a statement, Qylur explains that the machine "scans guest IDs and screens bags five times faster, detects multiple security threats, reduces security costs with up to 50% less staffing, and improves the guest experience."
It's sort of like taking CVS self-checkout to the next level. The way it works, according to Bloomberg Businessweek: "A person puts a bag into one side of the machine, scans a ticket or a boarding pass, and closes the door. The machine then scans the contents and compares their characteristics to those of every item it has ever scanned."
To retrieve your bag, you let the machine scan the ticket or boarding pass again. The more it scans, the more it learns. Yes, Bloomberg Businessweek asserts, the machine gets smarter.
The system has some nice side benefits as well. There's no need to take your laptop out of its case. And you don't have to chug your bottle of water before going through security. Just stuff everything in the machine's hexagon-shaped compartments, which look to be the size of an animal-carrying case, and let it work.
If a threat, like a firearm, is detected, the compartment locks until a security agent takes action.
“I think it’s worthy of consideration of the TSA,” said an industry security representative, who did not want to be named because he had no direct experience with the technology.
Founder and CEO Lisa Dolev, whose background is in security and defense technology, was inspired to improve the safety of large crowds, or soft targets, as she calls them, after the 2004 Madrid train bombings.
"You can't protect soft targets," Dolev told Yahoo Travel over the phone. “Nothing was really effective for the private venues. And that was the inspiration,” she added.
She noted that Qylatrons may make more sense for places that have no mechanized system setup, like stadiums or train stations. But even then, the machines won't completely replace the personal touch.
"We can't hand everything over to a computer yet," said Dolev, noting that the machines work in tandem with a person stationed both at the front and at the back of the machine. Humans are "still good at a lot of things," she added.
