Could A.I. and drones prevent the next mass shooting? This Maryland company thinks so

BALTIMORE -- Mass shootings in America have become all too common.

After tragic incidents in Mandalay Bay, Uvalde, Parkland High School, and even in Baltimore's Brooklyn Homes community, the push to reduce gun violence continues. 

In a number of these mass shootings, response times and inaction came under intense scrutiny with law enforcement.

Now a Prince George's County developer, Wave Welcome, is creating a technology called Per Vista that could reduce response times, and notify law enforcement of a threat - almost immediately.

Per Vista uses artificial intelligence to analyze video streams from surveillance cameras in real time.   

CEO of Wave Welcome Vennard Wright said the idea came about after a recent school bus incident in Prince George's County that showed three teens attempting to ambush and shoot another student on a school bus earlier this year.  In that incident, the gun misfired, and no one was shot.  

"People go, and they look at cameras after the fact, what we're trying to do is to make sure the police are deployed before something happens before a call is made," Wright said.  

Wright and his team coded Per Vista to detect long guns, and assault style rifles, which have historically been used in mass shootings.

"What we're doing is we're going frame by frame, and we've created a data set of known firearms and what it's doing is analyzing against what it sees and a match in the database," Wright said. 

Per Vista also includes a real-time monitoring system, that can send email and SMS messages when threats are detected. 

Indoor and outdoor drones are also part of Per Vista's blueprint to empower police with as much information as possible to save lives. 

Wright says local police officials, school administrators, and stakeholders universally believe Per Vista could be an asset to their deployment tactics regardless of geographic location. 

"That drone is deployed, and we're making sure that in addition to that we have a floor plan of the building, so we know where to send the drone inside and places where it's restricted because of doors or lack of access that's where the outdoor drone comes in, and we can see from the outside on higher floors where people can't see it themselves," Wright said. 

Artificial intelligence is now being used as a tool to fight crime and save lives.   The technology, which is cutting edge today, could become the new tomorrow.