Nonintrusive inspection method and system

A nonintrusive inspection method for scanning vehicles using radiations, comprising the following stages:

• a vehicle is placed in a marked spot, having access in an exclusion area through an automated traffic management subsystem that automatically commands functioning of barriers and of entry/exit semaphores;
• protection of the exclusion area is activated after a driver of the vehicle that is to be scanned left the exclusion area;
• a scanning process is initiated by remote commands to a mobile scanning unit comprising detectors on a detector boom and a truck chassis, said truck chassis moving during the scanning process, and a mobile;
• an x-ray, gamma, or neutron radiation source is activated;
• slow and constant motion movement of the two mobile units is started, these units moving rectilinear and uniform on parallel trajectories framing the scanned vehicle, the source robot moving synchronized with the mobile scanning unit;
• the movement of the mobile units is automatically controlled by electronic and informatics modules, connected with a control centre in a local area network, through radio modems, centre from which the mobile units receive commands, and towards which the mobile units send in real time status information and dedicated data;
• stopping of the scan is performed automatically in one of the following situations:
• when the detector boom has passed the extremity of the scanned vehicle and the detectors receive the maximum level of radiation, at the end of a programmed scan length, when a protection limiter of the movement is triggered, when the protection of the exclusion area has been breached, when a proximity sensor has been triggered indicating dangerous distance between the detector boom and the scanned vehicle, and when obstacles close to guiding paths of the mobile units have been automatically detected by sensors placed on the mobile units;
• an image resulted from scanning the vehicle is displayed on an operator's monitor;
• at the end of the displaying stage the protection of the exclusion area is automatically deactivated, and the vehicle is permitted to leave the scanning area;
• the two mobile units move back to the start position and the scanning cycle is to be restarted.