The U.S. Army has developed a new technology that aims to help warfighters detect potentially harmful biochemical agents on the field.The tool contains a volatile organic compound strip for the use place a sample such as soil or urine for testing on a pocket-sized device called the Biotouch, the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center said Apr. 10.
The mobile reader works to transmit the data to another device offsite called the Nett Warrior phone, which is designed to interpret the information and relay back the results.
ECBC allocated $27,000 in research funds to work on VOC strip applications with iSense LLC, the Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
The two-phone system aims to fulfill Army compliance requirements by addressing usability, user safety and data security, ECBC said.
Prototypes of the portable detection system are intended to be finished by May 2014 and to be used in South Korea, the center added.
