AI Spots Guns

A number of vendors are seeking to provide next-generation gun detection capabilities to schools and other organizations. Responding to too-frequent reports of shootings in the U.S., technology firms are beginning to roll out systems designed to quickly detect firearms in public settings. Many of the systems offer an advantage over conventional metal detectors, given that they often include video surveillance that can spot a gun in plain sight in a crowd, surveillance a metal detector may not be able to duplicate. Plus, some of the systems can utilize facial recognition to identify known persons of interest, such as known sex offenders, gang members, and the like; another bit of surveillance currently beyond the reach of conventional metal detectors. The Canadian firm Patriot One Technologies, for example, offers a solution featuring a microwave radar scanner driven by artificial intelligence (AI) that can detect hidden weapons, along with a video surveillance component.