Over the last decade, Azimuth has witnessed a significant increase in the number and ferocity of terrorist attacks both in its home country and internationally. This drew Azimuth’s attention to the urgent need for an effective solution to protect critical infrastructures and provided the drive for iDetecT4ALL.

Close discussions with end users identified that the slow delivery of effective solutions was due to a technology gap. Low cost solutions derived from the commercial CCTV market were delivering neither the reliability nor performance required and high technology sensors developed for defense markets were just too expensive for large scale deployment. Hence, a large proportion of the population was left exposed.

In addition, the importance of minimizing disruption to day-to-day life was recognized and in particular, the need to quickly and easily distinguish between authorized and unauthorized people around critical infrastructure. This set the grounds for a system which combined intruder detection and smart tagging. Still, what friendly and reliable technology could answer this highly demanding requirement?

A few thousand kilometers away, an Instro employee with a long term interest in Hi-Fi and audio recognized that techniques developed to measure loudspeakers and auditoriums might be migrated from the world of audio into the world of photonics and bring benefits to various optical range-finding applications. Some years of study lead to the development of a novel technology with the potential for cost effective implementation.

An international brain storming discussion served as a match maker between the need and technology and provided the vital spark for iDetecT4ALL.

Cross European personal friendships, business contacts and web searches then brought together the other missing parts of the puzzle to establish a strong consortium, covering the aspects necessary to give birth to iDetecT4ALL.