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Tech Transformation with Evan Kirstel: A podcast exploring the latest trends and innovations in the tech industry, and how businesses can leverage them for growth, diving into the world of B2B, discussing strategies, trends, and sharing insights from industry leaders!
With over three decades in telecom and IT, I've mastered the art of transforming social media into a dynamic platform for audience engagement, community building, and establishing thought leadership. My approach isn't about personal brand promotion but about delivering educational and informative content to cultivate a sustainable, long-term business presence. I am the leading content creator in areas like Enterprise AI, UCaaS, CPaaS, CCaaS, Telecom/5G and more!
What's Up with Tech?
Innovating Physical Security: Xtract One's AI-Driven Smart Gateway, Real-World Deployments, and Future Trends
Interested in being a guest? Email us at admin@evankirstel.com
Ever wondered how AI can make security screenings more efficient and less intrusive? Join us as we chat with Joshua Douglas, Senior Vice President of Product and Engineering at Xtract One, about their pioneering Smart Gateway. Joshua takes us through how this advanced system uses proprietary sensors and AI to differentiate between harmless items and potential threats, making the cumbersome metal detector a thing of the past. From ensuring safety at crowded sports events to securing office buildings, Joshua shares real-world success stories, including their impressive deployment at Madison Square Garden.
Looking ahead, we dive into the future of physical security and the importance of scalable solutions with their a SaaS-based management platform that facilitates quick decision-making and effortless software updates. Joshua discusses how evolving customer needs drive innovation, emphasizing the need for user-friendly products and continuous training. Get insights into future trends, like improved threat detection accuracy and the merging of security capabilities for a seamless, AI-driven experience at major venues. Don't miss Joshua’s practical insights and forward-thinking perspectives on transforming the landscape of physical security.
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Hey everybody, really fascinating and important topic today diving into the world of AI-powered weapon detection systems with the real innovator in the field at ExtractOne. Joshua. How are you? I'm great. How are you Pretty good? Thanks for joining, really intrigued by your mission and the technology behind it. Maybe start with introductions. Who are you and how do you describe Extract One?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm Joshua Douglas. I'm the Senior Vice President of Product and Engineering here. I've been here for a little over a year. But Extract One is all about delivering exceptional patron experiences and safer environments overall for our customers. Exceptional patron experiences and safer environments overall for our customers. And how do we do that?
Speaker 2:Well, we build a weapons detection system called the Smart Gateway and that gateway if you think about it, like when you go into any sporting event or let's just say any place like a theater, you may have walked through a walkthrough metal detector before and in that process you had to take a whole bunch of things out of your pockets and basically feel violated in the process, and maybe it beeps and then you have to take more stuff out of your pockets.
Speaker 2:We eliminate all that friction up front and basically we determine the difference between a benign item like a cell phone and a threat object actually in your pocket, and that allows you to be able to walk right through, assuming that you have nothing in your pocket. And that allows you to be able to walk right through, assuming that you have nothing in your pocket. So let's just say that it's venue belongings is what I'll call it. You can walk straight to your seat and get there as fast as possible, and if you don't, then you'll be stopped and a secondary screening process would occur at that point in time.
Speaker 1:Well, I've seen it in action myself. It's kind of a magical technology. But maybe describe how ExtractOne works, how the tech works, and your approach sort of behind the tech.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great question.
Speaker 2:So first it starts with an amazing team.
Speaker 2:You know hardware, software and you know AI, and what we have is some proprietary sensors in the product that allows us to get signal as somebody walks through the smart gateway.
Speaker 2:And with that signal we take and we run it through our software architecture and we look through and see if that signal that comes through is very similar to what we've seen, and see if that signal that comes through is very similar to what we've seen, you know, from threat objects where we've done thousands of walkthroughs, tons and tons of walkthroughs in the system. And then we compare it in that AI engine that is extremely scalable and actually grows as we get more and more information in the product. It makes it smarter and allows it to determine between that threat object and if there is in fact an alert that the AI engine says, hey, this looks like a threat that's on somebody's body. We then provide a very easy mechanism for the security guard, that persona that stands behind the smart gateway, to keep their eye on the patron at all times and whether or not there is an actual threat, and they get instantaneous feedback to be able to pull that person off for secondary screening.
Speaker 1:Wow, sounds like an amazing approach. And you know what's the balancing act between the experience of whether a customer or visitor individual and the security side. How do you keep people safe without making them feel inconvenienced and many times they are today in traditional. You know metal detectors and wands and we're all familiar with TSAs kind of experiences.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question too.
Speaker 2:Well, there is this thing called localization that does allow you, if you're more concerned about privacy of the person and it really depends upon you know the vertical, like if I'm a theater or if I'm a sporting event, where maybe I have some sort of requirement to be able to validate somebody's completely clean.
Speaker 2:You know that privacy aspect may not be my first concern. It may be to make sure that all threats are basically off the person, which means during a secondary screening process, they'll be asked to empty out their pockets and maybe go back through to do a loop around through the person, which means, during a secondary screening process, they'll be asked to empty out their pockets and maybe go back through to do a loop around through the system, or you'll actually get the wand as a secondary screening, because it is about safety first. In some of those places and in other places where you're thinking about privacy being a major concern but yet you still want to have safety, be it a school or an office building, maybe their secondary screening process will be slightly different. And that's where the localization comes into play, because you want to see exactly where that threat sits, because you don't want to actually encumber the person completely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I totally get it. So you have lots of deployments. Maybe talk about any favorite anecdotes or stories, success stories on where you're making a difference today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we are in a number of places, you know. We're in schools, we're in hospitals, we're in sporting venues, we're in theaters. Um, you know, and we just put out, uh, you know, a case study, uh, recently, for madison square gardens, for instance, and you know we were there day one, uh, when they actually opened up, uh, for you too, and that was a pretty awesome and amazing experience, you know, being able to look for those threats as people came in to be able to enjoy the show. Um, and you, you know, we, we have seen it firsthand ourselves like we're talking down to like knives and pocket knives that people bring in their products all the time, and I think just seeing that collection is good, but that's only one piece.
Speaker 2:Like, the safety side is definitely first and foremost, but seeing the look on people's faces as they walk through and they don't even realize that they're going through a weapons detection system, and they're like, oh, that was it, that was so easy. In fact, I was at one customer's location. The person started pulling all kinds of stuff out of their pockets because they were used to going through a walkthrough metal detector and somebody told them no, keep it all in your pocket. The first look was confusion. But as they went through the smart gateway and got to the other side, they looked and said OK, what next? And they're like you can go enjoy your show.
Speaker 2:And they're like that was so awesome. Like that look on their face to understand that, like security does not have to be cumbersome and at the same time, people can be safe. You know, we have another customer, it's corporate customer and we deployed there and what? What was really amazing for me is talking to some of the employees. They actually said that they didn't feel safe before the product showed up and they feel safe going into work now. That sort of thing gives me a lot of pleasure to know that we're actually satisfying customers all the way down to the people that they're trying to protect.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's really gratifying. You mentioned schools. Talk a little bit more about deployment in a school system. How does that work, in particular, and how can we scale this up to every school in the country? Someday, we scale this up to every school in the country at some someday?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's. It's a great question. I think that the challenges that we all have today it doesn't matter if it's walkthrough, metal detector or whatever like a lot of the weapons detection systems on the market today have been really designed more around that venue scenario, meaning that you can keep all the stuff in your pockets and everything. When you start getting into corporate and school environments, the personas change a little bit. It means that you have to actually think about much larger objects. Like you know, you're thinking about personal belongings, of laptops that have to be in the bags. Those things are going to be massive and will alert. So you have to have a con ops process or a conceptual operations process that allows you to pass the bag through, look through that. But that breaks the privacy aspect in many cases when you have to look through that bag, right. So that's that's the one challenge that I think a lot of people are still struggling with. But we work through that in that process piece to allow them to at least get through it. Like, here's some of the expectations that you need to do Allow the student to walk through, and that localization piece that I talked about before really comes into play at that point in time, too, you want to make sure that you're setting up the systems and the operations meaning the technology and the process come together and that you're training people, because those people also matter as part of that process. How they communicate to the students, you know, making sure that they don't feel like they're doing something wrong before they even get there.
Speaker 2:They're coming to learn, coming to teach, and that's something that we have to make sure that we do as a collective process whenever we have customers and we have one that we did a WebEx or a WebEx a webinar not too long ago, and what was really really intriguing to me is like something that was said to me off air, but the feedback I got and I'll kind of like distill it down, since it's not in writing but one of the reasons why a lot of our customers have come to us on the school side is that they they actually feel that we're very honest with them.
Speaker 2:We tell them what the product does and doesn't do, how they should work with it, how they shouldn't work with it, because, at the end of the day, our entire company is built on integrity and we need to make sure that we're upfront about the things that do work and don't work how they should work with the product, how they shouldn't work with the product because it isn't going to solve the panacea of all those items. Now there's also a lot goes along with that communication to the students, communication to the parents, communication to the school board. You know that also takes a lot of work and making sure that people have the necessary tools to make those communications.
Speaker 1:Wow, what a nice approach you know maybe talk about scaling up. You're rolling out the solution to very large venues. I assume you're working internationally as well. Give us a peek behind the scenes. How are you prepared to scale this up globally?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. So we've spent a lot of time thinking about scale. It's one of the reasons why we deployed Vue, which is our management platform, just this past or in this year. We started out with a beta last year, but some of our deployments are looking upwards of almost 250 units as we start to move forward. So having that SaaS-based environment to be able to support all those units, manage them and be able to get visibility into those smart gateways is part of that scale.
Speaker 2:The other scale portion for us is that we put the compute onto our product a long time ago for the smart gateway, so that way we can do all the AI operations that we need on each product, meaning we can make fast decisions. We can actually respond very quickly to the threat and be able to scale that out. It means being able to push software updates collectively across the board to all of our products as well that sit out in the field. The other scaling aspect is obviously people. We do have very good partners in various different regions. We have good partners in Japan and Australia. We have good partners in the UK and Europe. We also have extremely good partners, obviously here in North America, and part of that is a scaling process, but at the end of the day, it's all about good products that actually grow with the customer and making sure that we have the framework that grows with them. Yeah, that's as simple as it is.
Speaker 1:Fantastic, and what's been some of the feedback from customers? You mentioned some pretty positive feedback, but what are they asking for next? What are they demanding of you in terms of quality of service and expectations?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think a lot of it comes down to white glove treatment one, because they want to know that they're going to get constant training. I think that for a lot of our customers, if we think about in venues, they maybe use third parties to help do the security operations, for instance, but they need good training programs put in place for when people come on site to be able to do that constant training. They also want easy to use products. I mean, it's pretty self-explanatory. Part of the reason why we have, you know, the screen on the smart gateway is so that way. It gives you instantaneous feedback. You know exactly where it is. You don't have to know how to use a computer. You're able to very quickly make decisions, for instance. You know and it also depends upon geographic location and vertical. As to what they're asking. Obviously, evan, like in the in, let's say, in the UK, and like overall, just EMEA space, they obviously want knife detection, which we already have in our product today. That's something that they want there. They also want the ability to scale out and may have other things, as we see in the future. We're not quite there yet, but we'll probably get requests for other languages and things like that, just simple things.
Speaker 2:Now, if we think about core verticals, not geographic location, obviously I think what everybody is asking for is the ability to not alert on things like laptops, binders, eyeglass cases, water bottles. They all want that Like. That will be, in my mind, the next generation of how you can get better and what you can actually bring to the table Right. And then I think that you're also looking for a lot of integrations. Basically is what a lot of customers are looking for. They want integrations in with their VMSs. They want integrations in with their door badge access systems, ticketing systems are some of the things that we get asked for consistently, and these are all things that we evaluate on our roadmap as we push forward as well.
Speaker 1:Very nice. Yeah, look forward another five years. Do you see any future trends there? Physical security meets AI. You're already living in the future, it seems, with your product today, and its capabilities seem like science fiction. But where are we headed? Am I going to walk to the airport and just get on a plane one day with no TSA, no screening, no check-ins? I mean, what can you imagine here when it comes to AI and biometrics and security?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think we are already seeing some of that in that way already. I mean, I know that when I go to Heathrow, for instance, I don't meet anybody that takes my ID anymore, like I scan my ticket. It allows me through. All they need to do is, you know, body scan me and put me in a box and then basically I'm locked up at that point in time, right. So I think we're headed in that direction somewhat already.
Speaker 2:I think what we really are lacking is like consistency and accuracy and being able to pull some of that. I think you'll see a lot more of that. Threat detection get more and more accurate. The distinguishing factors between benign and threat objects will get all that much better. I think we'll also see a consolidation, you know, of capabilities as we move forward. For instance, you know, as I think, about some of our manufacturing and distribution customers. You know, as I think, about some of our manufacturing and distribution customers. You know that we have today, some of them are using like walkthrough metal detectors on the way out as people are leaving, because they want to like stop things, like you know, people from stealing, or they want to know whether or not they actually have intellectual property on them, like a computer or something like that right.
Speaker 2:I could see a combination of that happening where, basically, egress and ingress basically combine. I think you'll also start to see user experience and physical security come to an amazing point where, like you said, much like you go through the airport, but you'll probably get to a place where you go in with your sporting ticket, it happens to be your face and you walk in and it immediately recognizes you, scans you for weapons and allows you to get through without any interaction. Does that mean that people will be completely out of the picture? No, I think what it means is that jobs, roles, titles will adjust and basically people will become more efficient in their ability to protect and also serve the people that are coming to their facilities.
Speaker 1:Wow, what an amazing future. Well, congratulations on all the success. You have a busy run up to the end of the year. What are you up to, I guess head down team delivering product and helping customers. Anything else that you're looking forward to?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know we're definitely looking forward to GSX. It's a big year for us. It's been a year since I've been here, a major conference for us, for a lot of customers. We're looking forward to doing a few product releases in the next couple quarters and just continuously satisfying and making sure that our customers are happy as part of that as well.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Well, congratulations Onwards and upwards. Wonderful mission and thanks for joining us. Thank you, ed. Thanks everyone for watching and listening. Take care.