EPS shows new anti-terrorist barrier

Terrorists using vehicles to drive into crowds of pedestrians has become an all-too-common phenomenon in recent years. Preventing them from carrying out such attacks is the aim of a new barrier system from EPS. The Italian company’s Hostile Vehicle Mitigation (HVM) system consists of a series of hexagonal bases, each holding a large vertical pillar. The system is made of steel throughout, with the individual bases able to be connected with steel pins to create a customised barrier.
March 21, 2018 Read time: 2 mins
Stopping the threat: Luca Giubilato
Terrorists using vehicles to drive into crowds of pedestrians has become an all-too-common phenomenon in recent years. Preventing them from carrying out such attacks is the aim of a new barrier system from 8718 EPS.


The Italian company’s Hostile Vehicle Mitigation (HVM) system consists of a series of hexagonal bases, each holding a large vertical pillar. The system is made of steel throughout, with the individual bases able to be connected with steel pins to create a customised barrier.

The company says that the shape of the HVM was inspired by the Giant’s Causeway, a geological phenomenon on the coast of Northern Ireland, which consists of a series of interlocking basalt columns.

The company has chosen Intertraffic for the first showing of the new system. Engineer Luca Giubilato from EPS’s research and development team said that tests had shown the system capable of withstanding the impact of a 3.5-tonne truck being driven at it at 48km/h.

The basic weight of each unit is 281kg, but the strength and rigidity of the system can be further increased by slotting a solid steel weight inside each of the vertical pillars. That boosts the weight to 700kg.

The system is designed so that if an attacker’s vehicle rides up over the first column, it will slump on top of the pillars, rather than clearing them.

The individual modules are installed and removed using a hydraulic crane.

EPS has taken out a patent on the system, which has already aroused interest from potential customers in Switzerland and Norway, said Giubilato.

Stand 6.403

%$Linker: 2 External <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 0 0 0 link-external www.eps.net false http://www.eps.net/ false false%>

For more information on companies in this article

EPS

Related Content

  • BART launches multi-modal trip planner app in San Francisco
    April 2, 2019
    Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) has launched a trip planner app in San Francisco to provide commuters with access to various transportation modes and information on service disruptions. The BART Trip Planner was developed in collaboration with HaCon – whose software processes transit data from more than 30 operators including buses, trains, ferries and cable cars. BART says the app takes walking, cycling and car routes and the state of traffic into account to give users a realistic comparison of their c
    Read More
  • BART launches multi-modal trip planner app in San Francisco
    April 2, 2019
    Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) has launched a trip planner app in San Francisco to provide commuters with access to various transportation modes and information on service disruptions. The BART Trip Planner was developed in collaboration with HaCon – whose software processes transit data from more than 30 operators including buses, trains, ferries and cable cars. BART says the app takes walking, cycling and car routes and the state of traffic into account to give users a realistic comparison of their c
    Read More
  • Most pedestrian detection systems ‘hit pedestrians at 30mph’
    October 14, 2019
    In-car automatic emergency braking systems with pedestrian detection mostly fail to avoid hitting pedestrians - and are “completely ineffective at night”, according to new research. In shocking findings, the American Automobile Association (AAA) revealed that most systems hit a simulated pedestrian target at 30mph. A collision also occurred 89% of the time when a vehicle operating at 20mph encountered a child darting between two cars. In tests, all vehicles collided with an adult pedestrian immediately fo
    Read More
  • Enlarged Proceq group to stress Swiss quality
    March 21, 2018
    Portable materials testing specialist Proceq of Switzerland comes to Intertraffic with an enlarged suite of products, having newly acquired fellow-Swiss company Zehntner Testing Instruments. Proceq acquired Zehntner, which specialises in the quality control of surfaces – particularly the gloss measurement and retroreflectometry of surfaces – on January 1. Zehntner is particularly strong in the field of hand-held retroreflectometers.
    Read More

Highlighted Content