Increasing Situational Awareness Through Vehicle Intelligence

Evolution of data sharing

A session held following the initial announcement went into more detail on how agencies will benefit from the trove of data funneled into the system from devices throughout a jurisdiction, and even between jurisdictions across the state or even the country.

According to Axon, one of the biggest challenges in public safety is identifying and tracking vehicles involved in crimes. With 60–75% of violent crimes involving a vehicle, agencies need more than just license plates—they need richer, contextual data to help them solve cases.

Chris Lindenau, the founder of Axon Fusus, says that only a few years ago, it wasn’t commonplace for data to be shared between multiple platforms. “When we kicked off Fusus back in 2019, I literally went around the country and begged, pled and groveled with the early adopters of ALPR for interoperability within their platform in order for them to be open and share data. I didn’t start with the largest players. I started with the smallest, more agile companies who would be receptive to the concept.”

He says that agencies have faced a dilemma when it comes to using different platforms. He says that when Axon Fusus first started, an agency would buy one LPR platform until it became obsolete and then switch to something else or pay for the new version of their current platform.

“We’re in a new era. Insight LPR is going to get access to data from Axon systems. We are going to share into their search environment, data from Axon Fleet and our first party solutions in the same manner that we’re going to receive data from them,” he says.

Jason Mitura, who served as SVP of Axon Vehicle Intelligence, says he’s excited to see the company building diverse ecosystems of data. “Through partnerships with consumer cameras and other form factors, we have the ability to have millions and millions of end points out there to help solve crimes and get vehicles insights. I think that’s the exciting part for me. The customer value is being able to aggregate all that data into an open ecosystem.”

He highlighted the importance of Axon Fusus placing the data in a single pane of glass and make the data searchable to execute different workflows. “I think that’s a super powerful concept and what gets us excited about something new that we can deliver to customers and everybody her. Focusing on the open ecosystem, bringing in consumer data and helping get the most vehicle insights as possible.”

Developing Axon Intelligence

Jason Hartford retired from Axon as Senior Vice President of Product Management last year but was asked to come back a few months ago to help launch a new product category. “With Axon’s Vehicle Intelligence, when we were thinking up the scope of it, it was more than just a camera and its definitely more than just software. We are really aiming to give visibility and the means to go from incident to resolution.”

A big part of Axon Vehicle Intelligence is Axon Outpost and Axon Lightpost. Axon Outpost is a fixed solution that combines livestreaming, ALPR, and vehicle recognition in one device, giving agencies the full picture in real time. Axon Lightpost, built in partnership with Ubicquia, turns streetlights into real-time detection tools, combining ALPR, Vehicle Attribute Recognition (VAR) and livestreaming. The two new products join Axon Fleet 3 to form a suite of fixed and mobile vehicle recognition solutions, going beyond traditional plate reads by capturing vehicle attributes and extending real-time intelligence.

Joe Dimino, VP of Sales, New Products & Markets at Axon, has been with Axon for 13 years. He was the product manager for Axon Body 1 when body cameras were a newer product in the market. He says that his time spent with law enforcement agencies back then really helped inform the direction of the company now. “During that time, what was so valuable was meeting with the customer, doing ride longs with patrol officers and sitting in the dispatch center with call takers and dispatchers and sitting with records clerks, sergeants and lieutenants and just asking them how they might use a certain technology, and that helped us drive innovation over the past 12 years.”

He says that he sees the introduction of Lightpost and Outpost as just the tip of the iceberg. “What’s exciting to me is getting this in the hands of the customer and hearing how they’ll use this solution, not just for the straightforward things like license plate recognition or pulling data into Fusus or other systems, but things that we haven’t even thought of yet just by sitting and listening.”