The night is dark and cold, the frost has already started to fall giving that silvery shimmer under the lights of the passing cars and busses; wrapped up warm with heavy coat, gloves and a scarf watching the queue of people snaking round the corner, some equally wrapped up, others you can see there is no need for a check as they are let into the night club, as clothing is barely there, they are the easy ones, no visible threat.
Checking her SIA card on her arm hadn’t slipped, one of the nightclub security guards walked slowly along the line of those waiting to be let in, there had been 3 stabbings in the queue in the past 2 months, there had been numerous others stopped when knives were discovered, but tonight was different. As she walked along the line she was looking more alert, more efficient, more confident, she had a smile creeping onto her face which wasn’t usual on a cold night.
Her glasses hid what was really going on as they were the latest Vuzix Blade AR glasses that had all the information she needed from the club’s SWORD device, displayed in front of her eyes, she could control the menus by touching the side arm of the glasses, “this is so easy she thought,” having only just been introduced to her new tech a few days beforehand.
The SWORD tablet was quietly looking for threats. Encased in a weatherproof, ruggedized case and mounted at the entrance to the club, its mmWave sensor capability was checking all in line for hidden objects, comparing returns of signal against its AI enabled growing database of over 8000 threat objects. Those that had a semblance of clothing on, and even on this cold night some didn’t, were being checked for weapons without their knowledge.
Those that had been banned, or caused disturbances before were in the database, as she chatted with the waiting revellers the facial recognition camera and software was comparing its images against the banned list, the list of troublemakers. Nothing was being left to chance by this security detail, as she was using SWORD.
“SWORD is a new portable capability that includes the most essential threat mitigation tools that significantly and effectively identifies security threats from a stand off position,” says Doug Sear from Emergency Protection Limited, the company with the exclusive agency rights to SWORD in the UK & Ireland. “SWORD will be a game changer in the current climate, helping security staff stay safe, helping identify and deal with threats before they have gone too far and saving lives,” he added.
So, getting into the detail if we take SWORD apart to see what it does and how it does it, we find that it is in essence a self-contained mobile threat detection device that is easy to operate. It has multiple sensors and connectivity to an extensive artificial intelligence driven database of threat objects.
Its most sophisticated sensor is a millimetre wave sensor that can penetrate clothing and non-metallic containers to display a threat image, if it identifies one, and where that threat is on a person or in a bag it is displayed on the smart pad screen along with a probability percentage of what the object is by comparing it to an already existing and extensive database. Of course, that detail will have been relayed immediately to the Vuzix AR glasses the guard is wearing so there is no need to keep looking at the smart pad.
For the geeks out there mmWave is an extremely valuable sensing technology for detection of objects through clothing, in bags or concealed in other ways. It is a contactless technology with small wavelengths that can penetrate certain materials such as plastic and clothing and is not affected by environmental conditions such as rain, fog, dust and snow.
The energy emitted is minute, less than that of a mobile phone signal so perfectly safe, but that is not the only sensor. SWORD has a built in Facial Recognition capability, scanning individuals or groups in less than a second, it doesn’t retain any facial recognition data after a comparison with an authorised and regulated database of target faces, that database is not some centralised monolith but is created specifically by the SWORD user so in this scenario, the nightclub banned list.
As the security guard is moving slowly down the line, she gets multiple possible alerts, too much for her to handle, but the smile remains on her face as she knows her SWORD is networked to her colleagues and she can already see out of the corner of her eye them moving. It won’t be long before this little gang of troublemakers, that could so easily become a gang or murders, will be safely neutralised and held for the police.
SWORD has a range between 1.2 to 10.6 metres for its mmWave Radar and out to 22 metres for its facial recognition technology. It provides a ground-breaking, truly portable real time threat detection capability with centralised alerting and the ability to integrate easily with other security systems through various Video Management System (VMS) Providers. Its reporting and analytics capability give a management oversight.
The final sensor in the suite is for gunshot detection, something that the human ears have difficulty in getting direction and location correct in a built-up area. Something that would rarely be needed in the UK but if and when it is, it is reassuringly integrated into the SWORD system and is known as SWORD Enterprise.
Complementing the enterprise options is SWORD Sleuth that is a custom threat detection unit only available to government agencies, and private intelligence and security companies involved in national security. It combines the technologies of the Enterprise system with an AI based far and near field voice recognition using Yobe Voice and Yobe Voice plus. This allows the detection and biometric analysis of the spoken word even in what would be considered a high noise environment.
Philip Ingram MBE, a renowned security commentator and journalist said of the SWORD capabilities, “I have been watching the development of many novel hidden weapon detection capabilities with interest and 2020 will certainly be the year for many coming to the fore. However, I have not come across something this portable, this flexible and this exciting. I firmly believe the SWORD technologies will be a game changer in the constant fight against concealed weapons.”
Please contact Doug Sear for full details on SWORD and to arrange a demonstration on +44(0)7786 040502 or via sales@emergencyprotection.co.uk
https://www.emergencyprotection.co.uk/sword/
