HTS’s Meta Rotenberg: "Marine cargo is already scanned and tracked in a large number of marine ports worldwide. Air cargo can and should be handled by a similar type system to identify explosives. Regulation already exists, but scanning without tracking is not really effective."
Hi-Tech Solutions Ltd. (HTS), a developer and provider of optical character recognition (OCR) and computer vision systems, has developed a new patent pending technology that reads ULD (Unit Load Devices) container numbers for air cargo, thus enabling the digitization of the entire supply chain of air cargo.
HTS' CargoWatch ULD OCR system was developed in order to stretch existing recognition technology to handle the special challenges for identification of air cargo and was recently incorporated into a system developed and implemented at a major European Airport. The CargoWatch system is coupled to scanning technologies, such as Xray and Radiation detection.
The complete system scans for radiation, X-Rays the cargo, reads the ULD container numbers, records them and matches them to a manifest as they pass through the system portal. The ULD Portals can be placed at strategic points in the airport in order to automatically monitor all cargo being loaded onto planes.
"There is a real necessity to enforce the already existing regulation for air cargo scanning and tracking in airports" says Meta Rotenberg, HTS VP Marketing and Business Development VP. "Marine cargo is already scanned and tracked in a large number of marine ports worldwide. Hundreds of thousands of cargo containers are identified by HTS's system. Air cargo can and should be handled by a similar type system, as scanning without identification and tracking is not as effective throughout the entire supply chain.."
The air cargo system today is vulnerable to several security threats including: Potential plots to place explosives aboard aircraft; Illegal shipments of hazardous materials; Criminal activities such as smuggling and theft; and potential hijackings and sabotage by persons with access to aircraft.
According to forecasts, there is a large, growing, global air freight problem, as air cargo is expected to grow significantly, and triple in 20 years.
HTS's system, called CargoWatch, is a PC-based container terminal gate processing system, ideally suited for recognition and recording of ULD container numbers. Each ULD is identified with a unique code, using a systematic scheme from the International Air Transport Association the (IATA).
The system includes both hardware and software. It includes basic ULD number recognition and in the future will optionally include supports for damage inspection (DI) image.