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From: jack@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Neural Nets that are WORKING
Message-ID: <5416@vanuata.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>
Date: 6 Jun 90 15:14:50 GMT
References: <25089@netnews.upenn.edu> <1990May21.165517.29866@hri.com> <649@pbhal.PacBell.COM>
Reply-To: jack@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
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sire@srv.PacBell.COM (Sheldon Rothenburg) wrote:
> rolandi@sparc9.hri.com (Walter Rolandi) writes:

> > Are folks really applying neural nets in any profitable way?

> I didn't save the poster's comment, but someone referred to an SAIC 
> developed, neural network based baggage checker as a successful application
> of neural nets. It does use neural nets to analyze the results
> of gamma ray bombardment of the air traveller's luggage. It looks for
> evidence of minute quantities of "escaping" nitrogen which fit the 
> profile of plastic explosives. [...]

> The machines are in use in London's Heathrow [...]

There was a brief flurry of newspaper headlines two weeks ago about an
expensive plastic-explosive detector in use at Heathrow that had turned out
to be incapable of detecting Semtex except in multi-kilogram quantities
(many times the amount needed to destroy an aircraft).  The airport was
getting rid of it.  Do we have the same machine?


-- 
--  Jack Campin   Computing Science Department, Glasgow University, 17 Lilybank
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