Policing

Police Officers’ Bodycams Are Getting Smarter

Body cameras are expanding their capabilities. Thanks to Artificial Intelligence solutions, police officers’ bodycams will now be able to search for objects or persons of interest, such as missing children and suspects more efficiently.

Motorola Solutions announced that it will work with artificial intelligence (AI) company Neurala to develop intelligent cameras for public safety users. According to businesswire.com, Neurala’s AI capabilities will be integrated with Motorola Solutions’ software and cameras, including its Si500 body-worn camera. The integration will create intelligent cameras that can learn “at the edge” and automatically search for persons or objects of interest—significantly reducing the time and effort required to find a missing child or suspicious object in environments that are often crowded or chaotic.

The “at the edge” learning capabilities help solve some of the biggest challenges that come with real-time applications of AI. Neurala’s patent-pending technology provides an alternative to lengthy training for the AI engine, so that, for example, the intelligent camera “learns” to identify the person or object of interest. This feature, known as incremental learning, also reduces the risk of “catastrophic forgetting,” which occurs when a neural network forgets its previous training. Incremental learning also enables enhanced accuracy and latency for real-time public safety applications of AI.