Remote Acoustic Signatures Analyzer for Sealed Container Inspection

To address the U.S. Army need for a noncontact long-standoff inspection system with the capability to identify the interior fills of a sealed container by detecting its acoustic signatures, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a new Remote Acoustic Signatures Analyzer (RASA). This proposed RASA is based on the unique integration of a state-of-the-art acoustic excitation source, laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV), signal processing electronics, and efficient neural network (NN) software. The innovation in using a new long-range acoustic excitation source and a long-range operation LDV, combined with a newly developed NN-based acoustic signature classification algorithm, will enable the RASA to operate beyond 10 meters with a high probability of detection (>99.9%) and a low false alarm rate (<0.1%). RASA will have a compact size (14 in. x 8 in. x 8 in.) and light weight (<12 lb), and be suitable for field applications. In Phase I, POC will demonstrate the feasibility of RASA by designing and assembling a preliminary prototype based on commercial off-the-shelf components and measuring acoustic signatures from representative container fills. In Phase II, POC plans to develop an engineering prototype RASA and test it under field conditions.