We Tried to Trick TSA’s New Airport Shoe Scanner With Gummy Worms at CES 2025. Here’s What Happened

You pays for TSA PreCheck to maintain your sneakers on when strolling by means of airport safety, however what about the remainder of us who do not notably benefit from the indignity of shuffling our socks or — eek! — naked soles throughout a flooring that is had hundreds of different sneakers and ft scrape throughout it.

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In order to hurry up the method and reduce the ick issue, the Transportation Security Administration is at CES 2025 in Las Vegas displaying off new tech that might allow you to hold your sneakers on whereas scanning footwear for prohibited gadgets. 

Watch this: I Made Things Weird Trying TSA’s New Shoe Scanner Machine

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The premise is easy: You step onto the platform, inserting every foot in a marked space. Millimeter-wave expertise scans your shoe and sends knowledge to a pc. When CNET’s Bridget Carey noticed the expertise being demonstrated, she knew she needed to shake issues up and see how the TSA’s new tech would reply.

“Let’s make it attention-grabbing,” Carey stated. “Maybe I ought to put one thing in my shoe and see what occurs on the scanner machine.”

Carey tucked a wide range of small objects, together with a dental floss choose, gummy worm, mustard packet and plastic knife, inside her shoe earlier than stepping up on the TSA’s scanning platform.

Shoes have been a difficulty on the airport for over twenty years. In December 2001, Richard Reid tried to explode an American Airlines flight with do-it-yourself bombs he’d hidden in his sneakers. He was subdued after struggling to mild the fuse, and nobody was injured, however in 2006, the TSA started requiring passengers to take away their sneakers whereas going by means of safety.

Brian Lewis of the Department of Homeland Security advised Carey that if the brand new shoe tech is deployed at airports, the checkpoint officers themselves will not truly evaluate the photographs.

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“Everything could be run by automated detection algorithm,” Lewis stated. “So the officer would get a pink mild or a inexperienced mild, primarily saying, are the sneakers good to go, or do we have to do additional inspection?”

The machines are searching for a wide range of issues, Lewis stated, together with sneakers which were tampered with, particular materials properties and different points.

The expertise relays the picture in slices, primarily build up the photograph of the sneakers on the pc display, layer by layer. One demo shoe had a metallic letter “F” hidden inside, and Lewis confirmed Carey how the metallic letter slowly materialized because the picture slices piled up. A scan takes solely a couple of second, and the picture is displayed virtually instantly.

Gummy worm detection wants some work

Carey’s object-filled sneakers confirmed up weirdly on the scan, as could be anticipated. Lewis was capable of level out the condiment packet and the define of the plastic knife.

“I’m unsure I see the gummy worm, so we could must do some further improvement to have the ability to detect these successfully,” he stated.

When the machine rescanned her sneakers with out the objects, she was good to go.

“As we’re shifting in the direction of attempting to get to a extra seamless journey expertise, we all know that one thing the touring public would love [is to] now not need to take their sneakers off,” Lewis stated. “So bringing this expertise to passengers is one thing that we predict they will be actually enthusiastic about.”

The scanner remains to be a prototype, and knowledge from the CES demonstration will likely be collected and used for additional improvement.

For extra from CES, take a look at the finest TVs we noticed and the most revolutionary issues you possibly can truly order now.