Dear reader,
We are pleased to present you the first newsletter of our project, which started in September 2020.
We live in a rapidly changing society, driven by higher and higher levels of technological advancement. Augmented Reality (AR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are two of the most disruptive technologies in recent years, having radically changed practices and applications in several domains from entertainment, to education and to security. On the other hand, law enforcement and security today face multiple challenges that call for more efficient ways to deliver crucial information meant to aid in difficult decisions an officer might face in high-pressure situations, where police personnel are forced to make quick decisions. AR and AI therefore hold massive potential for policing by bringing together a variety of technologies to immediately supply relevant information to individual officers in a way that is instantly applicable to a given task or situation, by analysing real-world scenes and real-time data and utilizing virtual graphical elements such as textual annotations, in a coordinated real-time presentation.
This is exactly the research direction of DARLENE which aims to combine and advance AR and AI in order to help officers in the field by using AI to process in real-time multiple information sources and AR to present analysis results in an officer's field of view in a way that adapts to officer's stress level and prioritizes critical information. By realizing this technological ecosystem, DARLENE will enable law enforcement agencies (LEAs) to reduce and prevent crime, and to more quickly respond to crimes already in progress, by sorting through massive volumes of data to predict, anticipate and prevent criminal activities, making better informed tactical decisions and providing enhanced protection services for European citizens. To align technology development with actual LEAs' needs and requirements, DARLENE builds a community of LEAs and security stakeholders that will guide the development process and evaluate the entire DARLENE ecosystem. In this regard, DARLENE foresees extensive demonstration and training activities for LEAs while the entire solution will be demonstrated and validated in realistic scenarios during the pilot phase of the project, thus paving the way to its real-life deployment.
I wish you good reading!
Dr. Dimitrios Tzovaras,
Project Coordinator of DARLENE
