They’re one of the most feared terrorist tactics around: suicide bombs have killed an estimated 50,000 people around the world over the past 35 years. They now occur at the rate of one a day. It happened today in Libya. Suicide bombs are virtually impossible to prevent but now one U.S. businessman, with the help of a U.S. national laboratory, thinks he’s found the answer: The Concealed Bomb Detector or CBD – 1000.

CCTV America’s Hendrik Sybrandy reports.

For a while now, terrorist bombs have angered Robby Roberson to the core.

“It’s horrible what it does to people. It kills people, it maims people, and it wounds people,” Robby Roberson R3 technologies director said. “It just makes me sick.”

That disgust drove this entrepreneur to create a product he believes can prevent suicide bomb attacks like the one that struck Brussels, Belgium Airport in March.

“We don’t believe that we are the solution. We are a part of what is needed in an airport like Brussels,” Roberson said.

R3 Technologies has developed a portable device designed to detect explosives that current metal detectors would miss. The CBD-1000 is meant for crowded areas and so-called entry control points where large numbers of people pass through.

“It can be airports, it can be any place that people gather for any purpose. If we’re there, we’re going to see the target. We’re going to see the bomber,” Roberson said.

For years, this former residential home builder struggled with his invention?

“One time it would detect, three times it wouldn’t,” Roberson said.

Then, the New Mexico Small Business Assistance program paired Roberson with engineers at Sandia National Laboratory who helped him improve the device, which uses wave radar to bounce a signal off a stationary subject. A vertical wave comes back vertically if there’s no threat. But if there is one?

“It hits the guy with the IED and I get a vertical wave and a horizontal wave,” Sandia Labs Sensor Expert, J.R. Russell said, “It’s a really cool solution. It’s kind of exciting to see the way it works, how well it works, how sensitive it is.”

The magic wand bomb detector was once considered the answer to suicide bombs until it was determined to be a fraud.

But Roberson said his product, which retails for over $100,000 and of which 500 have already been built, is the real deal. He said he’s received interest from a number of countries. His eventual goal is to deter suicide bombers completely.

“This is not hocus pocus, this is not a Ouija board. We’re selling a technology like nobody else has,” Roberson said.

Technology perfected in this small workshop that he said could save lives before too long.

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Scriven King on suicide bombing

To talk more about suicide bombing and ways governments are fighting the crisis, CCTV America’s Mike Water interviewed national security analyst, Scriven King.