How did UIC evaluate AI security solutions before choosing VOLT AI?

UIC evaluated multiple solutions including BriefCam, Omnilert, and ZeroEyes, but found each fell short of their needs. VOLT AI was selected due to its algorithms for weapon detection that accurately recognize weapons in various situations without creating false alarms, plus its behavior analysis features that most competitors lacked.

What cost savings has UIC achieved with VOLT AI?

VOLT AI has been a major contributor to cost savings at UIC by reducing reliance on third-party security companies that were previously needed during staffing shortages. The university also reports reduced costs associated with damage and theft across campus through real-time detection.

How does VOLT AI help prevent campus theft?

VOLT AI monitors high-theft areas like bike racks and scooter parking for suspicious behavior, catching incidents in real-time rather than requiring hours of investigative work after the fact. Extended dwell time alerts also help in parking areas by identifying potential issues at payment kiosks or gate damage attempts.

Does VOLT AI use facial recognition technology?

No. VOLT AI tracks behaviors and clothing descriptions without relying on facial recognition technology, which helps address privacy concerns. This was particularly important for UIC given Illinois privacy laws restricting facial recognition use.

What additional features beyond weapon detection does VOLT AI provide for universities?

VOLT AI provides occupancy monitoring for off-hours security, person down detection for medical emergencies, unusual behavior detection for theft prevention, camera health monitoring to identify when cameras go down, and extended dwell time alerts for parking areas. These features allow UIC to address multiple security challenges simultaneously.

Customer story · Higher education · Illinois

UIC covers 250 acres with one police force.

Sixteen colleges and a medical center, looked after by a team that cannot be in every place at once.

250-acre urban campus 16 colleges and a medical center 142 streams live first, of 3,500 No facial recognition

A dense urban university campus with a city skyline behind it

The challenge

One police force, a city campus, and cover that would not stretch.

Demetrius Anderson has looked after UIC for nearly 30 years. The hard part was never caring about the campus; it was being in enough places at once.

Staffing that kept running thin

Maintaining a large enough security staff proved difficult, so the team frequently relied on third-party security providers when cover was short.

250 acres, and everything on them

Campus safety, theft, medical emergencies and parking monitoring across 16 colleges and a medical center, all resting on one police force.

What they did

They came for weapon detection and found rather more.

Demetrius went looking at the most current weapon-detection technology, and found software that addressed several problems at once.

Step 1
Test the field properly
The team evaluated BriefCam, Omnilert and Zero Eyes. Each fell short of what a campus this size and this varied actually needed.
Step 2
Choose on detection quality
VOLT was selected for algorithms that recognise weapons accurately across varied situations without creating false alarms.
Step 3
Start where it matters most
Implementation began on the 142 most critical streams of the 3,500 cameras across campus, with coverage widening from there.

What changed

What the team can act on now.

UIC got a good deal more than it went shopping for.

Someone down in an elevator lobby

Person-down alerts surface medical emergencies — in one case a man who had fallen in an elevator lobby — so help starts moving sooner.

Off-hours cover without calling anyone in

Occupancy monitoring lets the team watch during off-hours, which helps replace the need to activate third-party security companies.

Theft caught while it is happening

Unusual-behaviour alerts around bike racks and scooter parking surface likely theft in real time, sparing hours of investigation afterwards.

In their words

Why VOLT, in his words.

From the Technical and Intelligence Officer for campus safety.

VOLT's software gave us the ability to recognize shape sizes, utilize bounding boxes, and allowed us to be more detail oriented in what we were looking for as a trigger, rather than just recognizing any object taken out of someone’s pocket like other solutions.

Demetrius Anderson
Technical and Intelligence Officer, University of Illinois Chicago