IDO Security President Michael Goldberg says he has a solution for travelers sick of padding through airport security in their socks or, even worse, bare feet: a high-speed, shoes-on metal detector that retails for a fraction of the cost of its only government-tested competitor.

Goldberg says his product, the “MagShoe,” already has been deployed by public and private security forces in airports located in Madrid, Budapest, Prague, Mombassa, Nairobi and Bratislava, Slovakia.

High-security agencies around the world use the MagShoe, Goldberg said, naming the security forces at Israel’s parliament and its prime minister’s personal protection unit, as well as the Australian Royal Mint.

“They don’t want people smuggling out coins in their socks,” he said.

But Goldberg said IDO, which was founded in founded in Israel, believes its biggest customer base is yet to come.

“We believe the U.S., its airports, prisons, school buildings and offices, is going to be our largest market,” he said, adding that IDO has “been in some form of communication” with the Department of Homeland Security and hopes to bring an advanced model of the MagShoe to the Transportation Security Administration’s New Jersey lab for testing as early as September.

IDO says the MagShoe, a raised platform with dividers to separate the feet, takes less than 1.5 seconds to check a person, is portable, detects all metals but ignores normal metal parts common to shoes, an interface displaying the amount of metal found in shoes, with an alarm that goes off when that amount crosses a certain threshold.

Goldberg said the machine can also detect liquids and other substances that should not be in shoes by analyzing their mass. Future models may be able to detect biological and chemical compounds on shoes.

“We’re working on a sniffer,” Goldberg said.

The advantages of a metal detector that allows users to keep their shoes on is obvious to anyone who has traveled by air recently. Goldberg cited faster security checks as well as the cost of hiring security and operating the X-ray machines that examine shoes at American airports, which require maintenance after examining a certain number of bins and bags.

Other companies also have taken notice of the need for a shoe-scanning device, giving IDO competition in the race for a viable solution.

TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe said she is not familiar with the MagShoe, but L-3 Communications and another company have contacted her agency, saying they are developing similar machines. TSA has not tested models from either company, she said.

Howe said the only company that has submitted a shoe-specific metal detector for testing is General Electric Security, a division of GE. The company’s ShoeScanner, with a cost of $200,000 per unit, has been installed at seven airports by Verified Identity Pass, one of the contractors for Homeland Security’s Registered Traveller program, which promises faster security checks for an advance background check and a $100 fee.

But they have never been used and TSA said after testing at its lab that the machines’ detection systems are flawed.

Goldberg thinks his detectors can pass muster.

“It’s passed in Israel and Great Britain, so it has to work,” he said. And, he added, the MagShoe should have a comparatively low North American cost. “We haven’t really priced it out yet, but it should be considerably less than $10,000.”

Rob Margetta can be reached at rmargetta@cq.com