When a lone gunman began shooting from the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay into the throngs of festival-goers on the Las Vegas Strip below, it took first responders an hour and five minutes to make entry into the room he was firing from. The 911 lines instantly flooded with calls reporting an active shooter, but confusion and panic caused a number of errors in their accounts.
Plainclothes police officers and security for the event immediately took out their service weapons upon hearing gunshots, and as those injured or aiding the injured began to scatter throughout the strip the chaos failed to give first responders an accurate view of the situation at hand. The conflicting reports led them to believe they were dealing with a coordinated terror attack with six or seven different sites, and dispersed their resources accordingly.
This is what 18-year-old Blake Resnick learned when he met up with the SWAT commander of Las Vegas Metro for coffee. He also discovered that when they did arrive at the gunman's location they found a baby monitor camera pointed outside of his door, along with a separate weapon's cache waiting to be used if necessary - a very poor tactical situation for responders to go into.
Resnick was meeting with the SWAT commander because like many others in his community, the October 1st shooting during the Route 91 Harvest festival had made a significant impact on him. Las Vegas is Resnick's hometown, and his best friend happened to be on the strip when the shooting started. A longtime drone enthusiast, he already had several drone projects in the works before the shooting, but after he began to contemplate how modern technology could be utilized by first responders during these types of events.
He took away from the meeting two key needs in public safety: first, a way to get eyes and ears in places that would be dangerous to send a person. Second, the ability to rapidly provide first responders with situational awareness, preventing conflicting reports from taking away crucial minutes during an emergency.
A public safety technology company
Five years later, 23-year-old Resnick is the founder and CEO of BRINC, a technology company focused on developing products that improve public safety. His initial conversation with the SWAT commander led to the development of the company's flagship product, the LEMUR drone and its subsequent versions, the LEMUR S and the recently announced LEMUR 2.
BRINC drones are currently being utilized by around 400 safety agencies across the globe for applications ranging from search and rescue, hazmat responses, bomb disposal operations, barricades, and negotiations amongst other public safety verticals. The company has deployed over 50 BRINC drones in Ukraine, aiding emergency services in the region with various operations including surveying buildings that had been hit by cruise missiles. When the massive earthquake struck Turkey, BRINC drones along with personnel provided support for the response team across the region.
Surfside, Florida: a case study in drone capabilities
Notably, when the Champlain Towers South condominium tower partially collapsed in Surfside, Florida, first responders reached out to BRINC because they were facing challenges in managing the logistical aspects of locating survivors within the debris. They were unsure how stable the still-standing portion of the structure was, and any attempts to even survey the site would have been highly hazardous. BRINC drones were able to successfully fly underneath the still-standing portion of the tower, and provided structural engineers with vital information about the stability of the building.
The drones' capabilities proved fitting for the unique challenges presented by the catastrophe. Almost all drones rely on GPS for everything from navigation to stabilization as it hovers, but GPS capabilities were rendered useless under the feet of collapsed concrete. Additionally, the lack of light meant that using conventional cameras for localization and navigation would not be possible.
Resnick's BRINC drones were built on a system that remains robust in these conditions. Employing a LiDAR sensor to scan its surroundings and measure variable distances, the drones then use artificial intelligence and machine learning to pick out tracking points, and then use a high-powered night vision illuminator camera to track those point to point. Combined with an IMU that uses a combination of accelerometers and gyroscopes to measure and report its specific force and angular rate, the drone is able to navigate even without GPS capabilities.
In addition to blocking GPS signals, concrete tends to block cellular signals, command and control signals, and video signals. While this can be bypassed by using lower frequency comms, Resnick's new LEMUR 2 drones have the capability to act as signal repeaters, generating large mesh networks between drones, handheld controllers, and even body-worn radios. In the case of a collapsed structure as with the Surfside scenario, this means that if one drone is only able to reach halfway into the structure before it begins losing communication capabilities, it can simply land and be used as a signal repeater, allowing another drone to complete the job.
The future of public safety
Resnick is quick to emphasize that BRINC is not a drone company. It is first and foremost a public safety technology company, and outside of the LEMUR the company has also developed and marketed its BRINC Ball, a two-way communication device built to enhance the de-escalation capabilities of first responders.
Long-term, his ambitions are high. Resnick hopes to bring the 911 response time on a global level down to mere seconds with his technology. Envisioning a time when the police helicopter is an obsolete tool, he puts forward that a drone base on the top of every police and fire station, fully integrated with systems such as 911 calls and Amber Alert could allow an emergency response within less than a minute.
For Resnick, the applications are endless. The technology can be used for everything from rapidly delivering epinephrine and naloxone in medical emergencies, to providing police officers with valuable information on a scene before they enter it such as whether there are dangerous weapons present, to giving firefighters live aerial thermal imaging views to structure fires before the engines arrive.
Resnick has said that looking back on the events of October 1st, he believes that with the technology he is working to build today, response time would have been faster, which in turn would have saved more lives. To those who are tentative about the implementation of drone technology, he points out that there has been a natural evolution of technology and public safety, first with radios, then patrol cars and fire engines, CAD, RMS software, body cameras amongst many others.
"It's just a natural kind of progression of these things. It's still early days with drones, but I think someday it'll be as critical to operations as something like a police radio," said Resnick.
