Visual Defence, is pleased to announce that its recent submission of its robust forensic camera – SecurEye -- designed and built at the request of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science & Technology (S&T) Directorate has successfully survived rigorous blast testing – including an actual explosive charge representative of a terrorist bomb in a transit bus.
Visual Defence, is pleased to announce that its recent submission of its robust forensic camera – SecurEye -- designed and built at the request of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science & Technology (S&T) Directorate has successfully survived rigorous blast testing – including an actual explosive charge representative of a terrorist bomb in a transit bus.
The DHS SECURE (System Efficacy through Commercialization, Utilization, Relevance and Evaluation) Program requires third-party independent testing, so these explosive tests were performed at the U.S. Army Aberdeen Test Center (ATC) in Aberdeen, MD. This transit bus blast test scenario featured a retired Maryland Transit Authority bus rigged with representative explosives to emulate a suicide bomber detonation. Multiple camera units were positioned throughout the bus prior to the detonation. ATC technicians reported recovery of all units placed within the vehicle even though the transit bus was reduced to a mass of twisted metal.
As part of the blast test scenario, each forensic camera memory unit installed in the transit bus was pre-loaded with 160 hours of video. Fourteen of the 16 units tested in this blast experiment survived, without any degradation of the video. “I am very pleased with the results”, said Barry Tal, CEO of Visual Defence. “The Visual Defence SecurEye Forensic camera will ensure that authorized law enforcement investigators will at last have the vital and powerful information they need to reconstruct the events that led up to an explosion on a bus, train, or any strategic location this camera is installed.”
Visual Defence's SecurEye Forensic camera was designed to meet detailed specifications and rigorous requirements outlined by DHS for the transportation sector including having to be a resilient application that is also a low-cost solution.
"Cost of the final product is a critical factor in all of the technologies DHS is investigating,” said Steve Dennis, Technical Director for the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency within DHS S&T. “If users can't afford to deploy it, the best technology in the world is useless.”
SecurEye was further designed to be adaptable for a broad market implementation and use for infrastructure protection; sports and entertainment facilities; commercial shopping venues; airports, ports etc. SecurEye is capable to provided both wireless and network capabilities for both enterprise and more sophisticated special use case scenarios.