GOLDEN, Colo. — The Colorado School of Mines Police Department is using augmented reality (AR) headsets to enhance its active shooter and de-escalation training.
For about a year, officers have been using augmented reality to train for crisis scenarios.
“We've primarily focused on a couple areas so far. One is our active shooter response. But also, the other one is really around folks having mental health concerns or, you know, being in distress and being able to deescalate those situations,” School of Mines Police Chief Dustin Olsonsaid.
The Watchword software was designed by Denver-based data analytics company, Avrio. It can be tailored to any building or space officers would respond to in a real-life emergency.
“It takes us, in about a 1200 square-foot building, eight minutes to get a scan,” Alicia Caputo, Avrio CEO, told Denver7.
The headset projects realistic graphics of hostage victims, suspects and fire over the real environment, with no disorientation or motion sickness association with virtual reality. Watchword also has nuclear radiation exposure training.
Artificial intelligence can modify the scenario based on the users reaction. The trainer can also choose how calm or angry a character is, or if a suspect will surrender.
Olson oversees about a dozen officers at the large School of Mines campus in Golden. He says the Watchword AR technology won’t replace traditional training, but is a valuable tool that gives real-time performance data.
“We can use this technology, you know, in the middle of the night. An officer can go out and work through the scenario and, you know, go through the problems and come up with a resolution. And then we can record the training hours that way,” the police chief said.
Avrio says they have about 100 training headsets being used by different public safety agencies.
