European CHEQUERS project gets €3.35 million to develop hyperspectral-based explosives detection

CHEQUERS, a new project launched with €3.35 million of funding by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program, aims to develop technology to detect the presence of explosive and hazardous materials.

A group of European companies and researchers, including laser experts and law enforcement agencies, will collaborate on the CHEQUERS project to develop handheld and tripod-mounted instruments based upon active hyperspectral imaging and detection; these instruments will allow rapid stand-off detection of explosive, toxic, or otherwise hazardous materials related to terrorist attacks or industrial accidents.

CHEQUERS project partners include M Squared Lasers (Glasgow, Scotland), research organization Fraunhofer IAF and IPMS (Freiburg and Dresden, Germany), Fraunhofer UK Research (Glasgow), Vigo System S.A. (Ozarow Mazowiecki, Poland), Bundeskriminalamt (the German Federal Criminal Police Office; Wiesbaden) and Kite Innovation (Huddersfield, England).

"The potential application for this technology is huge; the ability for us to detect explosives and chemical warfare agents for the security sector and even potentially catastrophic leaks in the oil and gas industry could save many lives in the future," says Nils Hempler, Head of the Innovation Business Unit at M Squared Lasers. "We're really excited about this project and are looking forward to seeing it out in the real world. We aim to make this technology widely accessible to a range of emerging markets."

Starting this month (April, 2015), the CHEQUERS project will take a total of 42 months and is funded by the European Commission's Horizon 2020 "Information and Communications Technologies" call (under grant agreement No 645535), whose objective is to boost Europe's industrial competitiveness and leadership in photonic market sectors and to exploit new and emerging market opportunities.

Source: http://www.bigpartnership.co.uk/