BEL displays vehicle underbody scanner at Indesec 2009

Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), India’s premier defense electronics company has displayed a vehicle underbody scanner (VUS) at Indesec expo 2009, as part of its new focus on homeland defense equipment. The heart of the system is the detection engine, which is a centralized module housed within the plant or control room of the site. The module contains all the hardware needed to perform the analysis of every alarm activitation. The scanner is a tool to enhance the security of highly sensitive areas. It provides security personnel with a fast and effective tool to detect the presence of planted explosives and other suspicious packages in vehicles passing in and out of an area. The VUS facilitates the careful scrutiny of the underside of vehicles by providing an entire image of the underside to security personnel. According to M. Loganathan, BEL Additional General Manager, the system works by comparing the scanned image with the image of similar vehicles in its database. It can detect minute modifications made to the underbody to hide explosives and will throw out an alert if any deviations are detected. The system has applications in high security areas, government buildings, military installations, industrial sites, stadiums and hotels. It features automatic vehicle detection, real-time mosaic generation, automatic object extraction, vehicle front view snapshot, and others. The VUS systems can either be overground or underground so as not to alert vehicle drivers. Vehicles could be moving at speeds up to 30 KMPH and need come to a stop for the scanner to work. The system was developed in a highly cost-effective environment and can be sold at very competitive rates compared to international systems currently being offered to Indian agencies.