The U.S. Army just awarded a quarter million dollars in funding to a startup working on a handheld sensor designed to detect people through walls. The Lumineye is a handheld device smaller than a tablet that uses radar technology to detect people, using radar waves that can pass through solid matter.
The radar device, according to Task & Purpose, is 3D printed and weighs less than two pounds. The handheld sensor “uses signal analysis software to differentiate moving and breathing humans from other objects, through walls”. It also says the system can sense objects through smoke and fire.
On its website, Lumineye touts the Lux as capable of breathing person detection, dynamic human trafficking and false wall detection, finding living people in rubble, and disaster response. The web site makes no mention of military applications, but the technology could be very useful in the tight confines of urban combat, where adversaries could be just feet away from friendly forces but concealed by walls.
Although it doesn’t say so, Lumineye’s Lux likely uses the magic of millimeter wave radar technology. Millimeter waves are a form of electromagnetic radiation, like sunlight or radio waves, in the ten millimeter to one millimeter band. They occupy the space between microwave and infrared radiation. In the early 1990s millimeter wave radar was integrated into the Apache attack helicopter to allow it to see tanks through trees and cover. A 2000 Canadian Army paper, discussing the merits of millimeter radar technology, states:
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