As a result cars and people may be scanned from several meters away to detect explosives, drugs or other illegal materials.
ITL is expected to sign a contract with the Public Security Ministry in the near future. Several branches of the United States security forces have also examined the device and have shown enthusiasm in its performance.
Company CEO Ami Rub said the device will be fire tested by the end of this year. The company has reported that tests aimed at recognizing and detecting materials are are nearly 100 percent accurate.
ITL specializes in products and devices for the security establishment and other military bodies. Among the items it produces are night vision equipment and optic sights. In 2001, the company invested $2.5 million specifically in researching the identification of poison gases using remote sensing.
The device is made up of three main components - a laser beam, a spectrometer and a computer. It fires a laser beam at the target.
"The molecules or crystals are hit by the laser and react," said Dr. Mordechai Brestel, the head of the company's research team. "Any substance hit by the beam emits invisible light with its own unique wavelength, like an individual fingerprint" and the spectrometer analyzes the result of that emission.
Dr. Brestel says the company has developed a unique capability to decipher the results and to transfer them to a computer, with a database of the characteristics of various substances.
The computer then compares between its stored data and the results that the spectrometer produces, and gives the operator a real time warning if the test contains traces of dangerous or illegal substances. The device works up to a range of several dozen meters.
The company admits the device cannot examine objects inside a sealed container - a car trunk, for example - but Rub says substances still leave easily-detectable traces.
Ami Rodrich, ITL's business director, said the technology, for which U.S. and Israeli patents have been applied, has a wide variety of applications.
"At airports across the world, there is always a bottleneck where cargo and baggage have to be examined before being loaded onto the plane. Using our device, the check can be carried out in seconds."
An Israeli company, International Technologies Lasers (ITL) has developed a system that can analyze and identify chemical elements by remote laser sensing. The company says that that the rays are harmless to the eyes and body.