Under-surface radar (2002)
By Steve GartnerJune 1st, 2002
A portable system that can detect metal and non-metal objects hidden in walls and under the ground.
[Music plays and the words flash around the screen and resolve into the title “sci files”] [Image changes to views of windows and walls of tall city building] Narrator: Behind the walls of these city buildings lies a complicated mass of wires, pipes and ducting, providing the necessities of modern office life. But if there’s a malfunction, especially with optical fibres and plastic, they can be difficult to find.
[Image changes to two researchers in a lab. One is at a laptop computer and another is moving a device across the floor]
So so a team of CSIRO scientists, led by Dr Tony Farmer developed a radar system able to detect both metal and non metal objects by transmitting high frequency electromagnetic pulses.
[Image changes to views of the computer screen showing the scan results as a pattern of blue, red and yellow shapes]
The pulses bounce off objects under the surface to reveal their position.
[Image changes to Dr Tony Farmer]
Dr Tony Farmer: What one sees, is something similar to what you would get on a radar screen from a navigational radar. When an object is located, there is an increase in the reflected energy which is received by the radar system and that is shown as a bright red or a bright yellow spot on the screen and that spot will be able to tell the operator where in depth and where in position the object within the ground is.
[Image changes to views of windows and walls of tall city building] Narrator: The system can detect if reinforcement rods are missing and if there are gaps or cavities in the concrete, which may make the building unsafe. But it’s not only in buildings where the device can be useful.
[Image changes to the two researchers scanning the wall of a boardroom]
Dr Tony Farmer: This device is very good at locating small objects, near the surface and one of the applications is looking for plastic land mines.
[Image changes to Dr Tony Farmer]
These days most anti personnel land mines don’t have very much in the way, if any, metallic components, so using a metal detector is not necessarily going to find them.
[Image changes to Dr Farmer moving the scanning device across a boardroom table surface]
Narrator: The device can also find objects that have been placed secretly.
Dr Tony Farmer: The most interest in our particular unit at the moment, is from civil engineering and government agencies using these to locate small objects in walls.
[Image changes to Dr Farmer moving the scanning device across a brick wall]
Narrator: The sub-surface radar is a breakthrough in the search for wires inside buildings, mines beneath the ground and even hidden devices in board room walls.
[Music plays and the words “sci files” appears on the screen]