guns are a very divisive topic today's video is going to consider the problem

of gun violence from an engineer's perspective the fact that I'm about to

talk about guns online feels like I'm about to walk right onto the top of a

huge active hornet's nest but I personally feel this conversation can

take place in an intelligent respectful way I would love your help distributing

this video because just by the very nature of the topic I've got hundreds of

images of guns in this video it would not surprise me in the least if it was

suppressed in the YouTube algorithm because YouTube itself doesn't want gun

violence out there so please consider sharing this video if you like the

discussion that we have here in a second no matter what your position is in the

gun debate whether you love guns or you don't like guns I'm personally a gun

owner we all agree and everyone I've spoken to agrees that we want to do

something to prevent more gun violence two years ago I started working with a

buddy of mine named Chad we want to make Hardware smarter so that it can prevent

injuries and fatalities in a previous video we showed you our solution to

prevent kickback of a circular saw if we detect kickback using machine learning

then we stop the blade I hope to update you on that project in the near future

by the way but today I'm going to tell you about something we were working on

in parallel to that project about a year ago we decided to try to create a

technology a box really that could be plugged in to existing security camera

systems in order to detect guns where they shouldn't be we do not think we

have the solution for school shootings we think we have a component that could

be rolled in to a much larger strategy so basically it's a gun detector right

how many months you can put video into this box and the box tells you if

there's not only a gun in the frame but we're in the frame it is and draw a

little box around where the gun is I'll also associate a confidence level

too right right and so it's a probability of 0 to 1 mm-hmm

yeah and so if it's a 1 then it knows without a doubt it's a gun we have the

unit sitting here we've got the video that's coming from this webcam right

here we've got your phone set up right there

which is about to die by the way you need to charge your phone so check this

out we've got some guns right here okay these are empty and just let me show you

that because it's important so that's empty this one's also empty so we're

going to do a demonstration so what I'm going to do is I'm going to show those

firearms to the webcam now things to keep in mind here is it matters so when

I'm going to pull this gun into frame of the webcam it's out of frame right now

and I pulled in the frame the system should see it right right so I'm

bringing in the frame it's detected the gun it texts you the picture of the gun

you can pick up the other gun that's it that's a difference it's a discolor is

it tracking it they got it they got it and so it just has to track it in what

does it do this I'm a confidence level right like what happens if you have two

guns right it should detect them both what I was trying to do is only detect

guns that somebody's holding okay because if it's in somebody it's if it's

in a holster officers here yards holster he's not carrying it there's no chance

of it going off so the interaction of the gun to the hand is important yeah I

trained it to look for cues that were unique to guns like the hammer like the

slide and the barrel and the trigger and the trigger guard as well as your

fingers near those items right man this is fascinating real quick I want to say

something about what he just said Chad said he was training the system to only

detect guns that have hands on them and are out and ready that's an active

engineering decision and this is why that's important when we told a company

that we were working on a gun detection system and we'd like to see if they were

interested they asked us if we could detect guns through clothes we said no

we had decided not to because we felt like that was an invasion of privacy

they quit talking to us at that point because they were working on millimeter

wave radar technology and microwave technology to see through your clothes

now there may be a opportunity to use this type of technology in private

situations in a closed environment where certain people are being protected or

something along those lines however in public do we really

want do we really want to live in a world where we're constantly being hit

with x-ray things that look through our clothes I just want to go on record

saying that's not a good idea I mean the Fourth Amendment is about search and

seizure it is good for everybody no matter where you're at on the gun

debate the Fourth Amendment is a good thing and we should preserve it so I

just want to have this conversation now before we normalize the idea of

technology that can see through your clothes being open on the street there

I've been on record thanks I wanted to know what would the

computer need to see in this frame in order to call us again what are the

specific features on the weapon that are different from everything else in the

background and so then you just trained it by

playing video right yeah i pulling frames out of videos and and marking

within those frames that this is a gun that this is what's important of the

image of the gun not just a big box around the hole you know if somebody's

holding a gun I didn't draw a big box around their whole arm I focused in on

things that are unique to guns to bring the false alarm right down interesting

because one thing that like the fingers on the front like if you're holding the

gun those fingers are something that you're gonna see those are those are

kind of unique you hold a gun in a certain way right everybody knows how to

make it I think your gun yeah the other thing is you hold your cell phone like

that too and other objects like that as well so I

had to do not only a whole bunch of images of guns but I had to do a lot of

hard- mining and finding objects that it was thinking more guns initially and

then teach it that those are not guns so I did a lot of it I found a lot of

YouTube videos of people with cell phones youtubes are great for teaching

your computer what to do so I'm like I'm literally picking up a gun and it's

detecting the gun and I'm picking up a cell phone and it's like oh it's so fun

right this is like real dude so how many thousands of images do you

take you put in I think there are about 30,000 images in the

library right now and you went through and ID'd him yeah that's what took so

long right cuz I remember like Chad would call me and his brain would be

like total mush what's not dude oh not nothing much just sitting here

looking at all these gun images lighting kind images oh man so seriously how many

hours do you think you have highlight and gun images I would say like eighty

straight hours really yeah man yeah but the work I

wouldn't say that work is done but the foundation is done right like this is a

jumping-off point right right I think a big key of it was that there are other

gun databases out there from the movies and other you know things that people

put together but I had to go to a gun store owner and have him give me

permission and the people in the store permission to take pictures of them

holding guns I wanted lots of different hands and you

know everybody's hands are a little bit different lots of different guns

different types of guns and a gun store was a really good way to do that

so you're telling me that you're basically making a device to protect

people against guns and you got gun stores to participate in that data

collection process did you tell them what you were doing

yeah and so they're all on board yeah but this is also a function of the

resolution the web camera right yeah obviously it's a lot easier to detect a

gun that's really close to the webcam and the confidence goes straight up

through the roof when you do that like it's saying 100% it is a gun but if you

backup and this is a function of computing power I would assume

no it's it's a function of training how will you train the system we're on a

plane by the way he's not muzzle sweep than me so it's a function of training

this method is a thing it's a thing they yeah so that's interesting so the

goal ultimately would be able to get a processor that's like fast enough and

more powerful so that you can you could be all the way across the room here and

you would still still detect see there's no way it's gonna get it there because

it's against this background right well it's more there's not enough pixels on

the target from that far away so it's a spatial density right this number of

pixels on the target yeah super interesting but it has to be able to get

it in all different aspect angles exactly right the ability to track

through multiple vantage points if you will I wonder if he'll do that it won't

get that now it doesn't see that they think that the things that's a phone

doesn't it yeah and that was the big challenge to try to discriminate actual

guns from other things you might be holding

so once you've detected the gun what do you do with that I was in class today

and the school that I go to has emergency plans hanging in every room so

I went and got one today and I opened it up to the active shooter situation to

see what it is you're supposed to do and the answer is you barricade yourself in

a safe place and then you contact the authorities you call 911 and try to get

first responders there and you give all this detailed information to the first

responders think about an active shooter from the perspective of the 911 operator

call center one thing that happens in emergency situations like this is people

get confused because there's too much information some of its old some of it's

not true some of the speculation that's difficult for the first responders

however if you are able to real-time and see every room where there's a gun

brandished whether it's a good guy or a bad guy the people on the ground would

have real-time information that's actionable they could do something

because they have the gods eye view of the situation and there's not a bunch of

conflicting reports pouring in confusing people so where are we at engineers have

created gun detectors not just us there a lot of them on the market what happens

with this technology the purpose of this video was to start that discussion this

technology exists it's here today but as we move forward into a world where this

kind of stuff works what do we do with it we need to think about these issues

so I've got a contact form linked down in the video description reach out to us

if if you have a countermeasure that you're developing for active shooter if

if you have a need for library information if you're trying to

implement this into your security camera system just reach out also in an

upcoming video here on smarter every day I plan on discussing these issues not

just the detection component but the whole strategy with some people that are

working on technologies to implement the detection of guns in a room - how does

that information get to a first responder I learned things and I want to

get that information out there because I want people to know what's possible for

your school your church your business in your area all this being said the the

whole goal here is to contribute to this overall discussion of how can we help

save lives through uses of technology that's it that's what I want to do so I

hope you found this valuable and helpful please keep your comments and discussion

intelligent and respectful I would greatly appreciate that and with that I

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did you take mommy's roll why did you do that

okay cool thanks for putting the flowers on the table those are nice