Going through airport security checkpoints is a royal pain, and the Transportation Security Administration knows it. Which is why the TSA is at CES 2025 in Las Vegas showing off new scanners that would let you keep your shoes on. When CNET’s Bridget Carey spotted the technology being demonstrated, she knew she had to shake things up and give the scanners a real go.
If the new tech works, it could allow passengers to keep their shoes on through security while still scanning the footwear for prohibited items. You step onto the platform, placing each foot in a marked area. Millimeter-wave technology scans your shoe and sends data to a computer.
Watch this: I Made Things Weird Trying TSA’s New Shoe Scanner Machine
“Let’s make it interesting,” Carey said. “Maybe I should put something in my shoe and see what happens on the scanner machine.”
Carey tucked a variety of small objects, including a dental floss pick, gummy worm, mustard packet and plastic knife, inside her shoe before stepping up on the TSA’s scanning platform.
Shoes have been an issue at the airport for over two decades. In December 2001, Richard Reid tried to blow up an American Airlines flight with homemade bombs he’d hidden in his shoes. He was subdued after struggling to light the fuse, and no one was injured, but in 2006, the TSA began requiring passengers to remove their shoes while going through security.
Brian Lewis of the Department of Homeland Security told Carey that if the new shoe tech is deployed at airports, the checkpoint officers themselves won’t actually review the images.
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“Everything would be run by automated detection algorithm,” Lewis said. “So the officer would get a red light or a green light, essentially saying, are the shoes good to go, or do we need to do further inspection?”
The machines are looking for a variety of things, Lewis said, including shoes that have been tampered with, specific material properties and other issues.
The technology relays the image in slices, essentially building up the photo of the shoes on the computer screen, layer by layer. One demo shoe had a metal letter “F” hidden inside, and Lewis showed Carey how the metal letter slowly materialized as the image slices piled up. A scan takes only about a second, and the image is displayed almost immediately.
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Gummy worm detection needs some work
Carey’s object-filled shoes showed up weirdly on the scan, as would be expected. Lewis was able to point out the condiment packet and the outline of the plastic knife.
“I’m not sure I see the gummy worm, so we may need to do some additional development to be able to detect those effectively,” he said.
When the machine rescanned her shoes without the objects, she was good to go.
“As we’re moving towards trying to get to a more seamless travel experience, we know that something the traveling public would like [is to] no longer have to take their shoes off,” Lewis said. “So bringing this technology to passengers is something that we think they’ll be really excited about.”
The scanner is still a prototype, and data from the CES demonstration will be collected and used for further development.