The CSIR has developed a unique system to prevent prison escapes, reports David Shapshak
An innovative, low-cost motion detector system could be the solution to preventing the hundreds of escapes each year from police cells, say the police and its developers, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
The new system consists of two motion detectors – above and below the roof grilles of exercise yards at police stations – which throw up an infra-red curtain and sound an alarm if human movement is detected. The system has a computer that differentiates nuisance and false alarms and alerts the police of an escape in progress.
As about 80% of escapes are through the roof grilles, which must be open to sunlight – in accordance with the Constitution – and which are an ideal way for hacksaws to be smuggled into the prison (they are lobbed over the exercise wall), the system hopes to halt the mass exodus from police cells.
The low-cost system was developed by the CSIR in collaboration with the South African Police Services (SAPS). It is being run as a pilot project at police stations in Pieters-burg and Krugersdorp, says Director Ben Groenewald, head of the police’s visible policing division.
“The system was received with enthusiasm by the policemen on the ground, and the cost is at a level which most police stations can afford. National roll out of this system as a minimum level of workable security for police cells is now being planned jointly by the CSIR and the SAPS,” says the CSIR’s Dr Barend Taute, who developed the project with Neels Engelbrecht.
“The system also features a link-up to a control room and panic buttons for police officer who enter cells,” says Taute.
Future projects will be linked to a closed circuit television, which can be turned on when an alarm is detected.
Other innovations aimed at crime prevention presented this week by the CSIR in Pretoria included strategies for the environmental design of cities to enhance crime prevention and an infra-red perimeter intrusion detection system.
Another design was the sleep helmet, developed by electrical engineer Dr Valery Kononov to prevent heavy-duty truck drivers from falling asleep at open pit mining operations.
The helmet, a jury-rigged hard hat with two infra-red sensors that monitor the driver’s eyelids, sounds an alarm if the driver’s eyes are closed for more than two seconds. “Wake up! Wake up!” a little speaker barks, while sending a signal to the pit’s control room.
Kononov developed the sleep helmet after a mine requested help for drivers who fell asleep while driving their huge trucks on the laborious and monotonous trip up from the bottom of the pit.
The application could have significant applications in other areas of the mining industry, long-distance trucking and other transport industries. “This is a true South African innovation,” says Kononov.
Also showcased was another unique South African invention, the Heavy Vehicle Simulator, a monstrous truck-like vehicle weighing more than 45 tons that was developed by the CSIR 20 years ago to test stretches of roads and highways for strength and probable long-term performances under voluminous traffic.
The vehicle features a 24m frame with a wheel which can be loaded to simulate the effects of heavy vehicles – the major cause of road damage. It is furnished with sophisticated sensing equipment that can gauge the performance of the road surface and how it deteriorates under trafficking. The simulator has brought more than R25- million in revenue to the CSIR since 1995, a representative said.
The latest simulator has recently been shipped to Vicksburg, Mississippi, for the States Corps of Army Engineers to test airport runways and taxi-ways.
The innovations show how inventive South Africans can be, says CSIR president Dr Geoff Garrett, adding that the country came second out of 42 nations in an international inventions competition last year.
He attributes the country’s innovative ability to, among others, the power of diversity. “This can be seen from a political perspective as divisive, but when you harness the richness of our diversity and its power it can have a remarkable effect,” he says.