Baggage Inspection System Diagnostics:
A local startup developed a new X-ray imaging and automatic explosives detection system for airport luggage screening. The system features a proprietary dual-energy computed tomography (CT) technology to measure both density and atomic number to automatically detect explosives with high accuracy and a low false-alarm rate. They hired Eagle Lake Systems to create a comprehensive diagnostics tool suite for the system to be used by engineering, manufacturing, and field service.
Our challenge was to quickly develop standalone tools for each sub-system, and create integrated calibration and alignment tools to control and test the complete system.
Eagle Lake created a holistic diagnostic architecture framework in LabVIEW that leveraged modular, reusable API software components for the X-Ray illumination source, high-speed detector array, rotating gantry, and conveyor belt to create a flexible, extensible suite of software tools. The framework featured a Model-View-Controller design and used the NI State Diagram Toolkit to quickly generate complex choreography between subsystems.
Combining the subsystem APIs to control the hardware as the Model, state machines as the Controller, and "no-wiring" graphical user interfaces as the View allowed the team to create powerful solutions that were simple to use, easy to maintain, and safe to operate.