IUPUI team awarded $112,500 to advance work on voice AI for law enforcement

NIST Tech to Protect Challenge recognizes students, alumni for development of ‘Alexa-like’ technology

By Kevin Fryling, news and media specialist, Indiana University

A team of recent graduates from the School of Informatics and Computing at IUPUI and the School of Science at IUPUI has been awarded $70,000 from the National Institutes of Standards and Technology, or NIST, for developing artificial intelligence technology to help police officers conduct their work more safely and efficiently.

Along with funds previously awarded, NIST has granted the team a total of $112,500 under the Tech to Protect Challenge, a competition sponsored by the institute’s Public Safety Communications Research Division that provides entrepreneurs, programmers, students and others the opportunity to create solutions to public safety communications challenges faced by fire, law enforcement and emergency medical service responders.

The support recognizes the team’s development of Zenext, a voice-command virtual assistant based on Google Assistant that helps law enforcement conduct critical tasks hands-free. The technology works similarly to Siri or Alexa.

A news release about the team of recent IUPUI graduates, NIST, the Tech to Protect Challenge and Zenext is online.