To disperse an active shooter, robots and drones stationed at Air Force sites will deploy strobe lights and sirens.
The United States Air Force is currently testing a solution to the problem of active shooter situations that utilizes a combination of artificial intelligence and unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) on several of its bases.
“The whole point of the platform is to be able to take a robot and stop or confuse an active threat on an installation before they can do any more damage,” ZeroEyes Senior Vice President of Government Solutions JT Wilkins told National Defense. His company is making the technology for the government.
The company’s artificial intelligence gun-detection software is already being used in the security camera system at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota. The system will build off of this software to create a system that is able to send drones or robots to confront a potential active shooter.
The drones or robots will employ non-lethal techniques like sirens and strobe lights to distract a gunman.
Research, according to Wilkins, suggests that shooters display their guns two to thirty minutes before firing their first shot. If this is discovered, the robots may have time to act before a violent incident occurs.
“Therefore, it is eventually where we want to be able to send out these detections and perhaps deploy a robot to interdict as we’re moving a squad car from one side of the base to the other,” he explained.
Wilkins stated that the robots will not act autonomously after identifying a potential weapon, as a human will be there to examine positive alerts.
Wilkins stated, “You know that every AI will generate false positives, which is why we have a human reviewer in place to reduce some of that.”
Once the human has established that there is an ongoing danger, they will be able to authorize the robot or drone to take action. The robots will not serve as a substitute for traditional security measures or the police; rather, they will serve as a “force multiplier” that can provide assistance to first responders who are on their way to the area.
The testing phase for the technology will last for fifteen months, and during that time, Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida will receive both the robotic interdiction system and the artificial intelligence software that detects guns.
The discovery comes after a string of mass shootings that have shaken the United States in recent months, including one incident in which an armed bystander at a shopping mall in Indiana was able to intervene and stop the gunman before he could take any more lives.
Watkins noted that the company has 50 commercial clients and that he anticipates additional businesses to use the system once it is completely built, saying that the ZeroEyes technology will not only be confined to government clients.
