Detector identifies plastic and metal mines. (Tech Talk).CyTerra Corporation, in Waltham Waltham (wôl`thăm, –thəm), city (1990 pop. 57,878), Middlesex co., E Mass., a suburb of Boston, on the Charles River; settled c.1634, set off from Watertown 1738, inc. as a city 1884. , Mass., is putting the finishing touches finishing touches finish npl the finishing touches → der letzte Schliff finishing touches npl → ultimi ritocchi mpl on a landmine detector detector: see particle detector. designed to identify plastic mines. The system was designed for the U.S. Army. If it works as promised, the Handheld Standoff stand·off n. 1. A tie or draw, as in a contest. 2. A situation in which one force neutralizes or counterbalances the other. 3. A standoff insulator. adj. Standoffish. Mine Detection System will provide soldiers with a tool to detect metallic and non-metallic mines in all climates and terrain, while dramatically reducing the rate of false alarms, said David H. Fine, president of CyTerra. The company developed this technology after a laborious la·bo·ri·ous adj. 1. Marked by or requiring long, hard work: spent many laborious hours on the project. 2. Hard-working; industrious. 15-year research effort, funded by the U.S. Army. The service had long been searching for a reliable means of detecting non-metallic, plastic-cased mines, Fine said. "Existing mine detectors are based on a single technology--metal detection," he explained. "Our system fuses together two sensor A device that measures or detects a real-world condition, such as motion, heat or light and converts the condition into an analog or digital representation. An optical sensor detects the intensity or brightness of light, or the intensity of red, green and blue for color systems. technologies--ground-penetrating radar and metal detection. By combining these two complementary methods of detection, we can simultaneously boost the sensitivity of each technology and dramatically reduce the high number of false alarms that are associated with today's landmine detectors." Traditionally, high false-alarm rates have been a problem with landmine detectors that rely solely on metal-detection technologies, since there are many miscellaneous metal fragments in a minefield, Fine explained. CyTerra has a significantly lower false-alarm rate, and it should allow soldiers to clear mines much faster, Fine said. CyTerra is now fine-tuning the detector's design, in order to improve its performance. The company is expected to deliver 22 units to the Army for developmental and operational field testing under a variety of environ mental conditions, Fine said. |
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