Explosive Gas & Volatile Liquid Sensing Robot

The British army have used a similar robot for over 30 years to deal with terrorist bomb threats....

Ours doesn't bother to sniff for explosives it just uses a 12 bore shotgun to blast anything suspicious!

Works damn fine too!!

We have found that explosive sensors are susceptable to cross contamination by other nitrates which are freely used in the environment...

John.

Dear John,

That was very interesting one to blast anything suspicious.

We are designing a sniffer robot in place of sniffer dog. These sensors should be able to analyze the cross contamination and tell exactly what is in. It is not an easy thing. Sensors these engineers have planned will work on volatile substances.

We also have technology for other substances. However, they are to be purchased from us by the law agencies as we are not police. We are only technology research scientists and engineers. We can manufacture on demand. We tell all that we have done or achieved, we also demonstrate and then we either wait or move on to another research idea.

My sense of humour Shyam...

Seriously though, with the 'homemade' bombs used by the IRA and such like, the problem seems to be that these bombs are made from standard products in everyday use...

Such as nitrate fertiliser, the same nitrates that make plastic wrapping etc... So even with an excellent low level of cross contamination by a sensor, the sensor might still detect harmless products? Unless, of course, the sensor is detecting specialised explosives, i.e. semtex etc... In which case it wont pick up the homemade explosives, or will it??

John.

Dear John,

If you suspect a material to be a bomb then it is logical to do something about it.

Technology like Ion Mobility Spetrometers (IMS) that I am working on can detects few molecules in air if they were found floating. We are talking about part per billion sensitivity. These instruments start at price tag of US$25000 minimum to US$million for most sensitive versions. These instruments can sense lots of types of molecules at a time in one go and that takes only less than a second. Some cheap version that are US$25000 range can sense only with part per million level accuracy.

Earlier version of detectors (even now in use) were Photo Ionization Cell based crude type and could not differentiate among types of material they used to sense.

This are of research is too senstive and hence can't about it much in public. You can get good amount of information on this topic on the net to educate yourself in this field. Search for "Ion Mobility Spectrometer".

People who use these instruments actually are not so educated one and are generally from Police Department. They tend to ignore information and get many in trouble. Scientists will not be doing the Police job and hence you need scintifically trained Police for this specialized job.

Do ion mobility spectrometers detect the difference between fertilizer used in an explosive mixture and plain fertiliser?

In the UK we have had a couple of mistakes where people have been accused of handling explosives by measuring the residue on their hands, clothing etc... Only to later find out that the so called 'explosive residue' came from the plastic wrapping from a pack of cigarettes.

Such is the problem of identifying nitrates (in particular) whether used for explosives or for any innocent purpose.

I would imagine that with a spectrometer you would be able to distinguish other main components associated with explosives to reduce this false alarm though?

Yes, it can tell there is fertilizer and there is explosive like RDX separately giving information at a time for both items clearly. We need to invent lot more technology in future to beat the evil as there are scientists to help them in doing bad. They are also doing research against the detcetion.

While good people can't give me funds easily for good reason., bad people get funds easily for bad research. Bad research is heavily funded. Good people think they need not contribute for their safety and perhaps being good GOD will take care. They may be right but I don't believe in that bull sit. I beleive in planning and acting in time against the evil. I am sure I will end up with zero contribution if I ask for funds for research against terrorism. I may get some funds if I do research on OSAMA. This one reason alone makes many good people to work in silence. Some time I get paid so I keep doing this research.

The deadly bomd research is done by Government and also by terrorists. In fact evil may be hired by the Government to carryout tests on population at remote place and in some unknown country and on some unknown people. All it is done for data. USA has done on detained Japan people during world war II. There are many such tests done all the time. Fabricated diseases bio-wars are there all the time. No one can stop them as some one or the other goind to do it. Science and technology has reached homes and it will be flooded all over. It may become free for all any time worst than WWF.

As per my estimates, a very large disaster, much bigger than WTC 9/11 is in waiting, the kind this world will find impossible to digest and can not forget and may end up with nuclear war and elimination of some country or few countries. This can not be stopped. Time is tickling and this may perhaps happen in 10 years any time.

We need to work much harder and there is no listening to us. Governments are placing best men on the job and much more is to be done. Whatever is done, there will be some hole somewhere and rats will go in. You can never eliminate rates and they have their last laugh. to stop all this, once again we will see something like 100 Hiroshima. You just can't avoid that. Most of the developed world is gearing up for that on how to solve after event problem. The amount of risk is high for other countries that are nearby as they will face lots of problems as if they were in the mid of the war. Humanity will see a dirty face very soon of both good and bad. First step will taken by the evil and it will be followed by the good in worst form than ever seen before. World is driven to the corner by the evil and you know what may happen after that.

Let us go back to the original idea of detection and prevention and I will prefer to leave this to others who have power to solve it or face it. I want to do my work. We can detect and differentiate molecules by IMS and optical spectroscopy, photoacoustics spectroscopy.

When people talk about "fertilizers" being used as explosives, They are talking about compounds like sodium and ammonium nitrates, which are used as fertilizers. If the IMS (or any other) analyzer is set up to detect nitrates, it can't tell the difference between fertilizer and a bomb made of these materials. It is very specific though, for high explosives like RDX etc.

False alarms are a problem because of this. However, the IMS detectors ued in the airports have a false alarm rate of 0.04%, which is really pretty good.

False alarm or detection failure both are serious matter and have to be set properly at lowest limits.

Smith's Detection makes several handheld IMS devices, starting at US$7500. These devices have ppb level detection capability.

I am not aware of any IMS instruments that don't have ppb levels of detection. Particle Measuring Systems sells quantitative IMS analyzers, starting at about US$25K, that has sub-ppb limits of detection.

Smith's Detection instruments are bulky. Here idea is to build a robot that operates on 4-pen tourch cell or size AAA for about 1 hour in small zone. Using slightly more power and solar back up the device will keep doing job ontinuously.

In place of PID, we are using semiconductor sensor at present.