Converging a body camera with first responders’ most trusted lifeline—their radio—replaces the need for multiple devices. And Assist introduces a new category of human-AI collaboration for public safety, providing contextual and actionable information that’s personalized for the time, person and place where decisions need to be made.
As a converged and wireless device, SVX effectively halves the number of devices and reduces maintenance, while everyday shifts are covered with the swappable battery. Critically, the convergence of radio, video and AI serves as a force multiplier, capturing and synthesizing a greater diversity of data throughout an incident for more accurate police reporting and verified evidence.
“An officer’s uniform is their emblem. Their emblem of service, of protection, of courage and sometimes of sacrifice, in the pursuit of making our communities safer,” said Mahesh Saptharishi, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Motorola Solutions. “We’ve designed SVX and Assist to combine secure voice, video and AI with exceptional quality and capability for the people in uniform who protect us all.”
SVX brings Motorola Solutions’ mission-critical communications security and audio clarity now to both voice and video. Integrated with the APX NEXT radio, it features the company’s latest generation of ambient noise reduction, allowing officers to communicate with clarity or ask Assist for support despite background noise. At the same time, SVX’s high-definition video retains all ambient sound to protect the objective integrity of everything an officer sees and hears through the camera. Capturing dual streams through both radio and video communications, which Assist can unify in evidence, means SVX is capturing greater context and clarity for a more comprehensive timeline of events.
“Try using your everyday smartphone AI assistant with police sirens blaring; your message won’t be understood,” said Saptharishi. “Police officers need to confidently communicate wherever they are, and the quality of audio directly affects the usability of radio and video evidence.”
The power of Assist’s AI redefines SVX from being hardware to actively supporting an officer in real time. For example, Assist enables SVX to query a license plate or driver’s license and automatically search for associated records or warnings. Assist can detect keywords in radio traffic, such as “shots fired,” alerting nearby officers and command center staff while making it possible to see and hear what’s going on through SVX to support a response. Assist can turn SVX into a live language translator between an officer and a community member. Assist can also guide officers with steps to follow per agency policies, such as administering a life-saving EpiPen, which streamlines incident management and follows protocols.
“In this line of work, the worst feeling is knowing a key piece of information that would’ve changed your approach didn’t make it to you, that it was buried somewhere,” said Saptharishi. “When AI can make information proactively available, instead of something that needs to be found, we can automate tasks and augment human attention. In public safety, precious time can be the consequential difference.”
The company says its research shows that patrol officers spend between 40% to 60% of their time when writing reports entering basic data about people, vehicles and property. Motorola Solutions is targeting this time-consuming work, accelerating more factually-grounded police reports and evidence, while preserving officers’ time holistically, from 911 call to case closure.
The convergence of radio, video and AI means Assist can go far beyond documenting an officer’s individual perspective by collating the diversity of data from every stage of the incident, including radio conversations, officer’s location, 911 call information, dispatch records, other body or street camera footage, community inputs and more. Assist’s access to more sources means more cross-referencing and verification for higher levels of accuracy, reliability and trustworthy insights.
“An officer is trained to notice things in the field, so it's critical their reports reflect their perception of the incident, in their voice,” said Saptharishi. “Assist can support and verify their perspective, including identifying discrepancies. For example, Assist may flag that ‘the car is black (per video footage), not blue,’ a finding that must be confirmed by a human. This is about augmenting human memory versus replacing it.”
“We call this ‘good friction,’” said Saptharishi. “We’re designing to augment people, but it's incredibly important to make sure there is no blind trust and overreliance on AI. This is critical in the face of courtroom scrutiny and upholding justice.”
Motorola Solution says the development of SVX and Assist highlights its vision for AI, to simplify tasks through automation and proactively provide information with context for the person and the role they’re performing at a specific point in time. The company adds it will continue to develop and announce new applications for Assist across its safety and security technologies, marked by the Assist emblem to transparently denote when information is surfaced by Assist so that humans can evaluate and verify it.