BHS – Human Intrusion Detection
Active monitoring of moving conveyors – minimising false alarms
Detect Movement by People, Ignore Movement by Bags
Baggage handling systems are designed for bags, not people, and are restricted areas for both safety and security reasons. Freely allowing the continuous passage of bags but preventing children and unauthorized persons from using the baggage conveyors as a means of accessing a dangerous and restricted area is a challenge.
The Sentry HID is configured to detect movement by people and to ignore the movement of bags. It is ‘trained’ to recognize the movement of a bag traveling along a conveyor. Once trained, it looks only for movement outside of what would normally be exhibited by a bag. If it detects such movement, it enters ‘short pause’ mode where the conveyor stops for a couple of seconds and the sensor moves into high sensitivity mode looking for any movement at all as the bag should now be still.
If no further movement is detected, the conveyor resumes operation. If further movement is detected, the system enters emergency stop mode, closes the BHS access door, and can only be reactivated by airport personnel once an assessment has been made that the area is clear.
Avoid False Positives Caused by Alternate Solutions
Other HID solutions rely on infrared cameras to detect body temperatures but these systems can be falsely tripped by a warm bag that has traveled to the airport in the back of a car on a hot day. False triggers cause extensive delays and large numbers end up causing complacency, which is not ideal in an airport environment. Another option is ‘masking’ which involves an alarm sensor that is programmed to switch off as a bag is expected to pass through but if a person passed through at the exact same time as a bag, they would not trigger the alarm.
