Volusia County Schools Enhance Security with AI-Powered Weapon Detection
Volusia County schools have implemented artificial intelligence technology to detect weapons in real-time after seeing an increase in weapons found on campuses during the last school year. The new “Zero Eyes” technology, explained by Capt. Todd Smith, the district’s director of safety and security, uses AI embedded in existing cameras to identify weapons and immediately notify officials.
“Basically, it uses artificial intelligence inside the camera itself,” Smith said. “So it uses our existing cameras, and then it’s artificial intelligence embedded in it to identify weapons in real-time and make notifications that there’s a weapon on one of our campuses.”
The system was first piloted by the Daytona Beach police department, whose success encouraged school officials to move forward with the technology. “We tried to strategically pick the cameras that we thought would be the best for security and implemented it on them,” Smith explained, emphasizing that this is just another tool to enhance school safety.
Since implementing the new technology this school year, Volusia County schools have recovered a total of 56 weapons, although none were firearms. The AI system is designed to notify officials the moment a firearm is detected, reducing the reliance on human witnesses or the sound of gunfire.
“As soon as it arises, instead of waiting for there to be a gunshot fired or something along those lines or somebody else to witness it, it really just cuts out more of the middleman and gets it directly to the notification, to the people that need to know it,” Smith detailed.
This additional security measure comes after an uptick in weapons found on school grounds last year, prompting district leaders to implement various safety measures. The “Zero Eyes” technology is now integrated into cameras across all middle and high schools in the district.
