CrimeFlexible security solution makes life difficult for burglars
Ideally, homeowners want to be warned if a burglar sneaks onto their property, and farmers want to know if horses or sheep are no longer in the paddock or field they were left grazing in. Experimental physicists at Saarland University have developed a flexible security solution that can be used in gardens, driveways, business premises, or on grazing land and in woodland.
Ideally, homeowners want to be warned if a burglar sneaks onto their property, and farmers want to know if horses or sheep are no longer in the paddock or field they were left grazing in. Experimental physicists at Saarland University have developed a flexible security solution that can be used in gardens, driveways, business premises, or on grazing land and in woodland. The sensor cable system that Professor Uwe Hartmann and his team have developed issues a warning signal indicating if and where someone has attempted to cross over the cable. The cable itself can be fixed to long stretches of fencing, hung in trees or even buried underground. It monitors the Earth’s magnetic field and reliably issues a warning message to, say, a smartphone whenever it registers a change in the field strength.
Saarland U reports that the research team is looking for commercial and industrial partners with whom they can develop their system into a market-ready product.
It is perhaps stating the obvious to say that burglars prefer to take the hidden, more concealed route. Rather than working on a busy street, where they are likely to receive more attention than they care for, a deft leap over the garden fence will often give them access to the back terrace door or window where they have more time to work undisturbed on gaining entry to the property. Detecting this type of covert access is now possible thanks to a thin cable that physicists at Saarland University originally developed to secure long stretches of airport perimeter fencing. “The cable contains a linear array of highly sensitive magnetic-field sensors that are capable of detecting even the smallest of changes in the ambient magnetic field, at distances of up to several meters from the cable,” explains Hartmann. These changes can result from vibrations in a chain-link fence when somebody tries to scale it, or they can be caused by the zipper on the intruder’s jacket. If the cable has been buried in the ground of a driveway and the intruder passes over the buried cable, the sensors register the deviation from the previous magnetic field values and signal patterns and transmit this change to the central controller.
