How many lives would be saved if firefighters could see right into buildings?Until recently, few but the U.S. military and certain SWAT teams had radar equipment that could locate people through walls. Now an Israeli startup called Camero is marketing a version of the technology to police, fire, and rescue teams.
The saver... Camero's device, the Xaver (pronounced "saver") 800, emits an ultra-wideband signal that travels through plaster, brick, and even reinforced concrete. It then calculates the distance and orientation of everything on the other side--people, furniture, weapons--in real time.
"A rescue worker can locate trapped people in a matter of seconds," says Camero CEO Aharon Aharon. Dense walls reduce Xaver's maximum viewing distance of 26 feet, but Aharon predicts that within five years, new technology will enable the device to see as far as 300 feet into a building.
Camero isn't the only company trying to commercialize X-ray vision. Alabama-based Time Domain sells a $33,000 gadget called RadarVision2 that displays moving objects as radarlike blips. But the Xaver pieces together a full three-dimensional image of each person it locates. (more)
This, and other postcards, predicting the future in the year 2000, were produced by Hildebrands, a leading German chocolate company of the time as a give-a-way item. (more)
