Company leader explains how gun detection AI works in Volusia County schools
Volusia County schools are now using artificial intelligence to help find guns on campus. It's called ZeroEyes and is staffed by military veterans.
Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Rob Huberty said the technology connects to cameras already on campuses. He said typically no one is watching those feeds in real time. They only look at them after something already happens.
'The company really started after the Parkland shooting and we noticed the shooter was on camera with a gun out and nobody was really watching that and we said what if we used AI to help with this,' said Huberty.
The technology looks for objects that resemble weapons through school security cameras. Then, a monitoring center filled with former military members checks to see if the threat is legitimate.
'If they think it's a gun, they're going to dispatch that and they're going to follow up and they're going to call people on the telephone and it's going to show up on your cellphone instantly. It's going to go to the 911 call center at the same time,' said Huberty.
During the 2022-2023 school year, more than 80 weapons were found on Volusia County campuses. In the two years since, every middle and high school in the district has deployed weapon detectors. There is also a K-9 that travels between schools.
Huberty said he believes each of those tools working in tandem will ultimately make schools safer.
'All good security comes in layers. You need multiple things going on at the same time, so we are really a supplement to that. We are not the one answer,' said Hubberty.
So far this school year, more than 50 weapons have been found on Volusia campuses. None of those have been guns.
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