Mid way through day one, one of my colleagues, an engineer specializing in sensor technologies, ran back to our booth and was incredulous, "Have you seen that DKL booth? They have a swinging stick that they claim can detect people hundreds of yards away." I had not seen it, so together we left and went to check it out.
The DKL booth was very professionally done, and manned by 5 people in uniforms with company logos. All the brochures and leaflets were professional and technical (at first glance). I watched as they demonstrated the LifeGuard to visitors. The demonstrator would hold the device's pistol grip, and it would swing back and forth, occasionally pausing at certain points. Gee, this looks familiar, where have I seen this before? Oh, it's a dowsing rod, the rod on a handle variety! My level of skepticism was raised a notch. As I watched them demonstrate the device, my suspicions were becoming higher and higher. Their language was typical of fortune tellers. They don't always give a direct answer, but beat around the bush and depended on you to supply your own answers. DKL had a vast advantage in credibility, supplied by the setting of a professional trade show. People do not expect to run into charlatans at a professional trade show, and so make their best effort to fit the results to the expectations. It must work. If it didn't seem to work right for me, it must be my fault. I did not use it correctly. I should go along with their explanation, in order not to appear stupid.
I approached them and requested an on-site double-blind test. It was refused. Instead, Mr. Thomas Afilani, the inventor, offered an alternative: place six people in the field outside the building, and they will pick them out. Well, just great. There is no hiding place outside the building (it was by an air strip). If you put six people out there, they will all be visible to the operator. Furthermore, with the "beam width" of the device, and having six people in front, how can you NOT have a hit anywhere you point?
I asked to try the LifeGuard myself and was allowed to hold it and tested it. First, I was given the standard disclaimer that it has not been tuned for me. I asked what is involved in tuning it. The reply was by adjusting the length of the telescopic antenna. I asked that they tune it for me. And the response to that was, "It's okay. It's close enough." In other words, they left themselves a way out as usual. If it doesn't seem to work for me, then it's because it wasn't tuned for me. The box and antenna swings very smoothly on the pistol grip. It should, since according to DKL, there is no motor driving it. While in open air, any slight wind would be felt as a "tug" on the device. In the windy condition of the air strip, I felt tugged everywhere, whether or not it was pointing to any person.
I picked up the DKL LifeGuard brochures and browsed through them. They were the very unique. Unlike any other technical brochure, which an engineer like me can understand, the DKL LifeGuard brochure seemed to have been written by a lay person pretending to be scientific. It's laced with scientific jargons, but made no sense when examined critically. Some examples: "The LifeGuards' effectiveness is determined primarily by three of the four variables of Pohl's equation for dielectrophoresis force: the irregularity of the nonuniform electric field, the polarizability of the uncharged material, and the volume and shape of the uncharged material, which acts as a kind of antenna." More: "In field tests at Washington D.C.'s National Zoo, the LifeGuard located and tracked humans walking around the gorilla and orangutan cages and ignored the animals--even when the primates were between the humans and the LifeGuard." Wait a minute. How can it ignore the primates when they were between the humans and the LifeGuard? Does it mean that it did not register any human in that direction? Because if it did, then they couldn't tell if it registered the people or the other primates. But if it did not, then folks, we have found a shielding material that works against the LifeGuard. It's orangutans.
For the remainder of the trade show, DKL was a hit--as the entertainment for the exhibitors. News of DKL would pass between exhibitors, and we would occasionally nominate someone to go over to their booth, pump them for some more bogus information, and came back to share with the rest, usually accompanied by uncontrollable fits of laughter. One guy from the University of Texas even pretended to be interested in buying a unit, which created a lot of fuss for DKL, before he let them down lightly, with the reason being the price was too high. (Each one costs between $6000 and $14000.)
Some other stories we collected:
"You're thinking active, you need to think passive."
"He has a 19th century mind that is unappreciated in the 20th century."
"We can add polarization filters to detect deer instead of humans."
"We have to limit the sensitivity of the device to 20m, so when firefighters are using it on a burning house, they won't be detecting people that could be 5 or 6 houses on the other side of the one that's on fire."
"We could develop one that would work on your robotic vehicle, but we're concentrating on life-saving applications such as fire-fighting, since you can't put a value on saving a life."
And later, another guy: "No, you can't put one on a robot. You need a human in the loop. It takes a human to detect a human."