Passive Human Detection System
 

http://www.dklabs.com/

I recently observed the DKL Lifeguard Passive Human Detection System demonstrated.

• Claims to be able to detect Humans, above ground, open air, at 500 meters.

• Claims to be able to detect Humans in caves, rocks, underground at 100 meters.

Demonstrator stated that device has been used by 3rd and 7th SFGs. Was also claimed to be involved in the rescue of personel in the Haiti disaster.

A google search pulls up the Sandi Nation Laboratories double blind test. The lab says the device failed. http://prod.sandia.gov/techlib/acces...998/980977.pdf

In short:

Test A- Operator Knows where subject is hidden among 5 crates. Operator using device detect 10 out of 10 correct.

Test B- Operator does not know where subject is hidden among 5 crates. Operator detects 6 out 0f 25 correct.

Test C- The process resulted in 3 of the 15 trials having an individual present. The
Test Operator indicated the presence of an individual in 8 of the 15 trials. Only 1 of the 8 was
coincident with the actual presence of an individual. In the 7 instances of the Test Operator
indicating that no individual was present, an individual was actually present in another crate 2
times.

The final result of the test concluded that the Lifeguard was no more efective then pure chance.

I am interested in anyone that may have experience that can backup the manufactuers claim. Or is this Snake Oil?

Seeing the demonstration reminded me of water dowsing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowsing

Operator uses the lifeguard in much the same fashion.

It's not snake oil. I've used it myself.
 

It's definitely not snake oil, I've used it myself.

I first heard about the DKL Lifeguard from a SEAL who witnessed a live demo, which he said was amazing. It was also mentioned in Tom Clancy's novel "Rainbow 6". I looked it up on the internet, & found the company's website, www.dklabs.com, amongst a bunch of other websites that were badmouthing them and their technology. I also found the following magazine article, which confirms the company's claims, and explains how the results of the test conducted at Sandia Labs were misinterpreted.

http://www.officer.com/print/Law-Enforcement-Technology/LifeGuard-Tracks-Criminals-Where-They-Hide/1$35704

I was told that another test was conducted at a container port in Europe, in which the device was used to search containers for stowaways, after which the containers were physically searched by port officials. In that test, they searched over 1,500 containers, found stowaways in about 50 of them, and didn't miss a single one, although it did produce a small number of false positives.

I operated it myself shortly after a demo at last year's FPED at Quantico. As a former Marine from the late 60's I immediately knew how valuable a tool it would be for use in combat and security applications.

The company gave me the following point of contact info for one of their representatives, Garry Robb, a former special forces operator with the Phoenix program, and SOG (CCN): He can be reached at: grobb@epix.net, cell # 610-517-1252.

Note: The image you show is of the original prototype. Here's a photo of the current model, along with the computer used in training operators to use it.

atmhc:

You might want to review the board rules and comply before posting further.

Just a thought.

TR

TR;

I just posted my introduction. If you're referring another error or omission, please let me know...

Al

I am not sold.

1. The sandia test shot giant holes in the claims they made.

2. An advocate of the system claimed its success in Haiti. Once again, to have that kind of success and not have it documented or backed up raises warning signs.

3. Talked to someone just back if they had seen it overseas, per se, this is what he told me- "I was with this British guy in a back of a truck, he had something similar, he said you could buy extra cards for the device, pop these cards in and the device switched from finding humans to, Gold, water, food, IEDs".

I asked how much these cards cost, I was told 5k.

I agree that everything puts out a "charge". I agree that devices can measure this charge. But to ranges of 12 kilometers? Uh,,, I am not sold.

Hopefully DARPA has a few guys tracking this technology, but I don't think it is ready for the field.

Note: I understand the Brit had the gold card in his device.

I recall hearing about this device some time back. I've never personally used one but one of my buddies has. His opinion of it is that it is snake oil and the marketing and and sales pitch(smoke screen) is what convinces people to buy fools gold against their better judgement.

Lets think about this for a second, Sandia Labs, a facility specifically designed and staffed with professional people who design and test things for a living in conjunction with DOE, have publicly stated how it performs or lack there of. Thats enough for me and should be a good indicator that this thing is a pipe dream.


For the life of me, I want to say 60 minutes or another news show did a segment on this where the local army/police in a foreign country were buying these things for an exorbitant amount of money from the company and proved that it was pure chance as to their detecting the presence of people/bombs/etc. in the field.

The rebuttal to this claim by the company was that the operator was not properly trained/was using it wrong and went on to show their demo in a controlled environment and of course it was a miracle box.... go figure.:rolleyes:

At any reasonable distance, the "operators "signature would be equal to that of the person sought so you would need to know the location of the "subject" in advance. The electrical eminations from a human body are not directional. Therefore, the human heartbeat of one person sought, would be "detectable" in front of you, behind you, and in all directions.

It's sorta like standing in the middle of a football field, blind, and picking up the heartbeat of someone with a red shirt, as opposed to every one else.

Basically, nope, no way, not a chance.

Over 30 years as a pretty da**ed good engineer.

Well . . . at least it's not as big as Ground Surveilance Radar
and doesn't require a specific MOS. (I remember those little sissies.)

How about one of these?

http://www.opticsplanet.net/game-fin...ed-gf-a-e.html

I read the link. Who/when discovered that humans produce ULF energy? A frequency that low has a wave length that's thousands of feet long. That doesn't seem to be electrically efficient.

DKL Passive Human Detection System
 

To El Rog:

If you read the full Sandia Test Report yourself, you'll see that the conclusions as stated in the Abstract in the beginning, contradict the actual test results themselves. The DKL device made all 25 of the 25 detections in the test, and it says so in the report. They didn't count 19 of the 25 tests because they were off directionally by a few degrees. DKL however, has always said that the accuracy of the bearing varies depending on the distance and the obstacles between the operator & the target. If you were tracking a fugitive in the woods, the device will point you in the general direction of the target, and the bearing will harden up the closer you get to him. Clearly you're better off searching a 5 to 10 degree sector of the woods than a 180 degree sector. Search and Rescue personnel have tested it in a variety of different scenarios, and in each case, the device has dramatically cut down their search time. You can read the original report by Sandia yourself, (it's not that long) and you can find it online at:

http://prod.sandia.gov/techlib/acces...998/980977.pdf

Dramatically new technologies, that defy the common wisdom of the day, often are met with disbelief, and beset by detractors who refuse to believe that they're capable of meeting their maker's claims. Read the report, and contact the company to arrange for a personal demonstration. Once you see it work, and actually operate it yourself as I have, you'll be convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is indeed real.

There are numerous different uses for this technology, other than locating our enemies in military scenarios, in which lives can be saved. Searching for survivors in earthquake rubble, locating survivors in burning buildings, locating individuals afloat after boating accidents etc, finding missing skiers after an avalanche, all become much easier with this technology. With so much at stake, isn't it worth your time to look into it on your own rather than assuming that a testing lab like Sandia cannot make mistakes? Hundreds of these units are in use around the world, and have already saved many many lives.

I don't know too much about the other device you're talking about, but the DKL device has no removable cards, DKL has never claimed that it works at distances of 12km. The maximum operational range that DKL has ever claimed is 500 meters. There have been other devices that claimed to be able to locate people (as well as explosives & drugs) that have been proven to be fraudulent. Two of these, the Quadro Tracker and the ADE651, both of which resemble the DKL devices, are discussed in the following article at a well known website, the Skeptic's Dictionary:

http://skepdic.com/quadro.html.

The more recent of the two, the ADE651 is the subject of the following report from the BBC:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQMwX...yer_embedded#!

To: Papa Zero Three

I'm virtually certain that you're confusing the DKL LifeGuard with the ADE651. The operator during the Sandia test was a fully trained DKL representative. The ADE651, which sells for $40,000 each, was sold to various military forces. The Iraqi's bought thousands of them at a cost of $85MM.

To: plato

I don't doubt that you're a good engineer, but unless you're really familiar with the science of dielectrophoresis, you can't truly understand how the DKL device works. In any event, your conclusion is wrong. The operator's electric field is part of the circuit that occurs when the device locks onto its target. I wish I could be more specific, but the operator's field in some way attracts the target's field. I'm not an engineer myself, so I can't explain the science too well, however your analogy is totally off base:

"It's sorta like standing in the middle of a football field, blind, and picking up the heartbeat of someone with a red shirt, as opposed to every one else".

That's not what DKL is claiming the LifeGuard can do. It cannot locate one specific person, regardless of any specific characteristic of that individual person out of a crowd of other people. It can however find an individual such as a lost hiker out in the wilderness. The hardest thing for the device to do is locate people in crowded urban environments, because the device is so sensitive, that it can easily pick up others in the search area. The "RAD" (Range Attenuation Device) that sticks out of the front of the LifeGuard (and looks like a car antenna) can be shortened or lengthened in order to adjust the unit's range of detection. If you were looking for a living survivor in a house on fire, you'd have to shorten the RAD so its range is only slightly more than the distance from the operator to a short distance behind the house. If used with the RAD fully extended, and if there were individuals in another house behind the house you're scanning (within a few hundred meters), the unit would pick them up, whether there were or were not survivors in the house being scanned. The company claims that the unit does generate roughly 5% false positives in many scenarios, however in numerous tests, where there were some false positives, the device has NEVER failed to make a detection if a living target was present.

The following is a quote from an article in Law Enforcement Technology Magazine, (March 2007) which can be found online at:

http://www.officer.com/print/Law-Enf...y-Hide/1$35704

"Montanio recalls his first field application of the system. He received a call on Easter night from the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department requesting assistance at a scene where a suspect had taken hostages and barricaded himself inside a City of Industry residence. Officials wanted Montanio to use the LifeGuard system to determine where people were located within the home, in case they had to do a rescue entry.

He recalls deploying the system on all sides of the home and getting two detections, one in the dwelling's center and the other in its northeast corner. When the suspect surrendered and SWAT officers entered, they found the subject and hostages holed up in the center of the home while a baby slept in a bedroom in the northeast corner.

In another incident, as undercover officers made a methamphetamine buy in south Los Angeles, the suspect took off running into a large warehouse. Montanio says he was able to use the LifeGuard to narrow the suspect's location to a small corner of the warehouse. K-9 officers located the suspect hidden in a locker near where Montanio had made the detection."

I suspect that a number of people have simply assumed the DKL device is just another iteration of bogus devices like the Quadro Tracker and the ADE651. It's not. The company is run by two retired Naval officers with impeccable reputations. As a former Marine myself, I hate to think of all the American lives that have been lost in the middle east in recent years, that could have been saved, if the DKL device was widely deployed by our military. When I first saw the device working, my immediate thought was how many lives could have been saved if these devices were in use in the late 60's in Vietnam. Enemy ambushes at jungle extraction points would have been impossible if the crew chief in the Hueys could have scanned a potential LZ from the air before setting down.

I'm certain that everyone reading this knows how valuable a tool this device can be if it does in fact do what the company says it can. For 12 years now, the company has been trying to overcome the negative publicity caused by the Sandia report. All it's asking for is a chance to demo their technology for anyone who's willing to look at it with an open mind and judge for themselves if it's real or not.

I've used it myself, and I swear that it's 100% legit.

atmhc

Crankier this morning then I thought I was.

So if you have never used it how can you say it is 100% legit. :munchin

When told where a person was located, in which of 5 crates, their operator "found" that person was in that crate every time.

When not told, the operator "found" someone about 20% of the time, same amount that chance would dictate.

The individual results agree exactly with the abstract.

We're not talking "common wisdom" here. We're talking physics. The laws of physics have never been repealed :) One of the company claims is that the very small charge in a human heart grips the 2 pound device and impedes its movememt. We're talking mass here, whatever the electronics involved. That ain't gonna happen :)

If you've seen hundreds of rescues, then you've seen hundreds of rescues. If you've been "told" of hundreds of rescues, let me tell you about UFOs, bigfoot, the easter bunny. Thousands of reports.......:D


Attraction at the atomic level? Not complicated at all. You aren't going to "attract" the electrical charge that causes someone's heart to beat, put it in circuit with yours and a 9 volt battery. If possible (and it ain't), don't worry about survivors. That electrical impulse was sorta useful and you just fried it.

"It's sorta like standing in the middle of a football field, blind, and picking up the heartbeat of someone with a red shirt, as opposed to every one else".

The analogy demonstrates wave propagation and diminishing strength. Guess you sorta gotta be there.


The quote is from a reporter regurgitating the words of the company's representatives, I believe. I don't think she's a physicist. I don't take it as an evaluation. I don't think anyone should

It took 11 minutes each to scan each of several small crates at a distance of 20 meters. Would you want to try to interpolate that into an area the size of several thousand crates?

Ouija boards and dowsing rods provide answers the human mind, if we are helped toward those answers. No doubt this device can do the same

You should be the next one to take it to Sandia, or at least a reputable independent lab