Battery cells are a fire hazard in environments such as e-waste recycling plants, and separating batteries from electronic waste is critical for the correct extraction of precious metals from discarded electronics. Existing methods for detecting batteries in cluttered environments rely on expensive X-ray machines and computationally intense machine-learning techniques. With the widespread propagation of battery powered IoT devices, it is increasingly important to efficiently and cost-effectively detect batteries.
In this paper we show that harmonic radar is capable of detecting the presence of batteries. We tested a proof-of-concept system on Alkaline, NiMH, Li-ion, and Li-metal batteries. With the exception of Li-metal coin cells, the prototype harmonic radar detected the presence of batteries in our experiments with 100% accuracy.
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Arguello, Cesar, Beatrice Perez, Timothy J. Pierson, and David Kotz. “Detecting Battery Cells with Harmonic Radar.” In Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Security and Privacy in Wireless and Mobile Networks, 231–36. Seoul Republic of Korea: ACM, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1145/3643833.3656137.
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