National Urban Security Technology Laboratory (NUSTL) X-ray Scanning Rover OpEx Report

The National Urban Security Technology Laboratory (NUSTL) conducted an Operational Experimentation (OpEx) of the X-ray Scanning Rover (XSR) on July 29, 2015, at the New York City Police Department’s Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York, during the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate’s (S&T) Urban Operational Experimentation (OpEx), hosted by NUSTL. Ten responders with experience in bomb response from New York, New Jersey, Washington D.C. and Massachusetts were present during the XSR demonstration.

The XSR is a prototype X-ray robot designed to rapidly screen bags left behind after an evacuation or emergency. This technology is being developed under a research and development agreement with DHS S&T. It is intended to bridge a technology gap between currently available handheld or robot-mounted X-ray scanners, which have a small imaging area, and larger vehicle-mounted mobile X-ray scanners, which are not nimble enough for indoor use.