BBN Technologies, an advanced technology solutions firm, will develop and demonstrate a prototype, lightweight, wearable shooter detection system with funding from Natick Research, Development and Engineering Center. The new system will leverage technologies developed for BBN's commercially-available, acoustic shooter detection and locations system, Boomerang.

Boomerang, a mobile acoustics-based shooter detection system, is currently deployed with US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2005 Boomerang won both the DARPA "Significant Technical Achievement Award" and the Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange (MITX) Technology Influencer of the Year Award.

Mark Sherman, vice president, BBN Technologies, said, "Our goal is to demonstrate a reliable, wearable system before the end of the year so we can get this live-saving technology to the individual, dismounted soldiers who are most at risk as soon as possible."

About BBN Technologies
BBN Technologies solves real problems through the creation and disciplined application of advanced technology. With expertise spanning information security, speech and language processing, networking, distributed systems, and sensing and control systems, BBN scientists and engineers have amassed a substantial collection of innovations and patented solutions. Today, BBN is managing the planning and design of GENI, an advanced network facility spanning the United States; is saving lives in Iraq and Afghanistan with its Boomerang Shooter Detection System; operates the first metro quantum cryptography network; has deployed the first real-time foreign broadcast monitoring system; and is proving the benefits of the world's first stereoscopic digital mammography system in clinical trials. For more information, visit www.bbn.com.