Hempfield Area is expected to be the first school district to deploy an AI-driven weapon detection system designed with the help of a Carnegie Mellon University scientist.
CurvePoint, based on Pittsburgh’s North Shore, was launched about 11⁄2 years ago by CEO Skip Smith and Chief Scientist Dong Huang — a senior project scientist in Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute. The company developed Wi-AI, an AI model that uses Wi-Fi signals to detect concealed weapons, including guns, in schools.
Huang has spent about eight years developing the technology, Smith said, and it has been adapted to the education space in recent months.
The company aimed to bring in 15 school districts to test the technology before its formal launch. Six school districts — Hempfield Area, Central Valley, Williamsport, Chartiers Valley, Montoursville and Seneca Valley — agreed to pilot the technology.
Chartiers Valley was the first to get onboard, approving in October a five-year contract with the Pittsburgh company. Wi-AI was installed at Hempfield Area in December.
Hempfield school board member Lindsay Stevens, part of the board’s safety and security committee, announced Monday the district will exit the pilot stage and formally launch the technology in September.
“Our staff and resource officers have participated in trainings. We have been testing the system with a lot of run-throughs and practice sessions,” Stevens said. “We are glad to have this program as we continuously explore innovative strategies to enhance the safety of our students and staff.”
Superintendent Mark Holtzman expressed excitement to launch what he called state-of-the-art technology.
“I think it’s the future of school safety — being able to identify concealed weapons — so we’re pretty excited about that,” Holtzman said.
CurvePoint is working with Hempfield Area to complete final implementation, calibration and validation work before mass-producing the technology, Smith said.
“It’s an important milestone for our team,” he said via email. “We started with the belief that Wi-Fi signals that already surround us could be used to identify physical objects and potential threats without requiring schools to add another layer of cameras or visual surveillance.”
How it works
Wi-Fi signals interact in specific ways with different types of objects, Smith said. For example, the data that is collected from these interactions allows the system’s AI model to distinguish between an umbrella and a gun.
Involving schools early in the testing process was a priority for CurvePoint. Working with staff from the pilot districts has helped CurvePoint “understand how the system needs to operate in a real school environment, not simply how it performs in a laboratory,” Smith said.
“Wi-Fi sensing is affected by the physical characteristics of a building and by the activity occurring around the sensors,” he said, “so real-world deployments have been critical to our developmental process.”
Districts who purchase the technology will pay for installation and an annual fee for CurvePoint to monitor and analyze the data coming into the system.
According to an agreement Hempfield Area school board approved in December, the fee would be $60,000 a year for the first three years. The system installation was free only for Hempfield and the five other pilot schools.
Administrator: Technology tests at 94% accuracy
District administrators and CurvePoint officials spent the summer months conducting the final round of Wi-AI testing, said Jamie Schmidt — the district’s director of innovation, strategic partnerships and safety.
Actors carried several varieties of artificial weapons, similar to airsoft guns, throughout the school building to see if Wi-AI would take notice. The system proved to be 94% accurate, occasionally falsely identifying a binder or umbrella as a weapon, Schmidt said.
CurvePoint staff will come into the high school Thursday, the first day of school, to track the technology’s performance throughout the day. District staff will receive Wi-AI training in the first week of September. And shortly before the anticipated Sept. 21 launch, administrators and district police will be trained on the Wi-AI dashboard, which issues an alert when a weapon is detected, Schmidt said.
Metal detectors will remain
Hempfield Area plans to continue using the OpenGate metal detectors it purchased for its high school, Harrold School and middle schools in 2024, Stevens said. The devices — two parallel poles that create a gate for students to walk through — cost a combined $114,500.
The district discontinued its former ZeroEyes system, a software that analyzes security camera footage to detect weapons, in February, Schmidt said.
If Wi-AI performs well after the launch, Hempfield Area will move the high school’s metal detectors to the elementary schools, she said. But the long-term goal is to install Wi-AI districtwide, Schmidt said.
“It’s definitely a cool product and something that kind of plays on the advancements in technology,” she said. “I think it’s something that continues to put safety at the forefront and be a large reassurance to staff and students.”
“Really the beginning”
The Hempfield launch date is not a finish line for CurvePoint, Smith said.
The company aims to set launch dates for the other five pilot schools before advertising the technology to schools nationwide. A university, which Smith declined to name, also has expressed interest in Wi-AI — a first for CurvePoint.
“(The Hempfield launch) is really the beginning of the next stage for CurvePoint,” Smith said. “Once a system like this is operating in the real world, our job becomes continuing to measure it, learn from it and make it better.”
