Evolv Earns Edison Award for Completely Reinventing Threat Detection

Last week I had the distinct honor of accepting, on behalf of everyone at Evolv Technology, the Edison Award we won last year for the “game-changing innovation” that our Evolv Express® system and Evolv Cortex AI™ software platform represent. We got word of the award last spring, but there was no public event at which to actually receive it – so while I participated in this year’s ceremony from afar, it was gratifying to virtually bring the award home.

That’s because the Edison Award is one you want to display proudly for all to see. It’s one of the few awards that truly recognizes significant technical innovation in products that solve actual problems in the real world, as opposed to in a lab. And herein lies our story.

As the original announcement said, the award goes to companies that are “changing the world with their incredible vision, their commitment to innovation, and the introduction of new products and services that will make consumers’ lives safer, healthier and more sustainable.” 

Our second-generation product, Evolv Express, for which we earned this award, is a game-changing weapons detection system. With its’ ability to scan up to 3,600 people an hour and the intelligence to differentiate between weapons and personal items – without forcing people to empty pockets and bags or break stride – it’s improving security at the speed and scale required in this post-pandemic world. 

Evolv Technology is leading the digital transformation of physical security, one that is touchless and addresses today’s threat of pandemic viruses as well as concealed weapons. By harnessing our technical innovations in sensors and AI to overcome the widely recognized deficiencies of outdated security screening products, Evolv’s technology enables ticketed venues, workplaces and schools to vastly improve their ability to keep their customers, employees, guests, students and staff safe all while rapidly and more naturally enter these venues.  And, it’s all done in a way that integrates with the way people want to live, and more importantly, the way they deserve to live.

Edison, Bell and Early Metal Detectors

The Edison Award, of course, is named after Thomas Edison, one of the greatest inventors of all time, and holder of some 1,093 U.S. patents. Evolv Express is an entirely new approach to metal detection technology first created by another renowned inventor and Edison contemporary, Alexander Graham Bell.

While Bell is best known as the inventor of the telephone, he was also experimenting with a metal detection device around the time in 1881 when President James Garfield was shot by a disgruntled diplomat. The bullet was lodged in the president’s chest and for weeks physicians attempted to find and extract the bullet.

Bell had successfully used his device to detect bullets in sides of beef and shrapnel in Civil War veterans, so he thought it may be of use in Garfield’s case. But the device failed for a simple reason: unbeknownst to Bell at the time, underneath the horse-hair mattress on which the president was lying was another made of steel wires. Those wires interfered with Bell’s metal detector, which was based on electrical inductors, rendering him unable to find the bullet. In other words, the technology couldn’t separate the signal from the noise – we’ll come back to this technical challenge. 

By the 1920s, metal detectors using radio frequency (RF) waves began to come on the scene. While they have been refined over time, the metal detectors we all pass through today are based on that same 100-year-old technology.  

Interference: An Age-old Issue

And that technology still suffers from the same challenges that rendered Bell’s detector unable to help President Garfield….interference. As we all know, anytime you pass through a metal detector, you are asked to empty your pockets and remove any metal – keys, phones, wallets and so on, and pass through in single file. In effect, all those personal items are interfering with the detector’s ability to detect the real threat: weapons. Legacy technology and an outdated approach certainly don’t integrate with the way people live today.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

In 2013, after the Sandy Hook school shooting and Boston Marathon bombing and amid terrorists shifting targets to nightclubs and stadiums around the globe, we founded Evolv with the singular goal of keeping people safe by finding a way to detect weapons at places that aren’t mandated to do so – like nightclubs, schools, workplaces, sports and concert venues.

These kinds of venues, companies and schools need security that does not disrupt the public gathering experience and avoids the problems that come with traditional security approaches such as crowds, single-file lines, bag checks, wands and invasive pat downs.

We knew there was a hurdle to get over. If the detection device presents too much hassle and creates lines, people won’t embrace it.  It needed to be seamless, accurate and fit within venue operations.  It had to balance the desire to improve safety with the need to maintain or even improve the visitor entrance experience.

Evolv has a Singular Goal

Starting out with a small team of colleagues who are world-class in understanding detection challenges, we had the idea to combine state-of-the-art sensors with smart software and machine learning algorithms to solve this problem. After refinement and iteration, we’ve delivered on our goal: detection technology that is all at once accurate and frictionless. And can perform reliably under real world conditions.

Now, About that Signal to Noise Problem

When I say accurate, I mean we can reliably differentiate a weapon from a phone and the other objects we all carry on a daily basis, and we’ve accounted for variables such as wind and vibration that may throw off other forms of RF-based sensors. And by frictionless, I mean you no longer have to empty pockets, go through screening single-file, or even slow down your normal walking speed.

Security Can Only be Effective if it Works in the Real World

Innovation in our space has to address often competing requirements: balance the physics of detection, address the realities of the all the stuff we carry, and support the operational needs of the customer.  And it has to satisfy all three in a way that achieves high throughput, quickly and more securely.

That, I would argue – and the Edison Award folks apparently agree – is game-changing technology. And it certainly helps to make us all safer.

So, I proudly accepted the Edison Award last week on behalf of all the smart, dedicated people on the Evolv team who helped develop this technology, refine it in the lab, and bring it out into the field, where it can solve real-world problems. I hope both Edison and Bell would be impressed.

In 2006, Clive Humby, a British mathematician and entrepreneur in the field of data science, declared “Data is the new oil.” This compelling position has been amplified thru the years and referenced in numerous settings for various intents, particularly with the advent of machine learning and AI. While the comparison may often create interesting debate material, what is generally recognized is the finite supply of oil versus the infinite waterfall of data.

Until now, physical security screening and rich front door visitor entry data has been an untapped resource. With legacy screening systems, visitors pass through a security checkpoint as a single, moment-in-time transaction, and because legacy systems are analog, digital data escapes uncaptured in the wind—

Moving from analog to digital, Evolv has transformed physical security screening using state-of-the-art sensors and AI-based software. Our systems constantly capture valuable data at this “threshold real estate” which can be mined, analyzed and used for optimizing operational efficiency.

The refinery

Screening and entry data while plentiful is just a raw resource. From our “Data is the new oil” reference, it needs to be processed and refined to derive value. Analytics helps harness the data and extract value to improve your security posture, optimize your resources (both security, general venue operations, and front of house), and ultimately create delighted customers. 

The premise that using data and analytics to optimize operational efficiency is not a quantum physics or atom splitting concept. There’s nothing new here except it’s never been applied in the physical security screening space. In fact, some say that physical security screening is the land that digital transformation forgot. Evolv Technology just unveiled an important enhancement to our Evolv Express® digital, touchless screening system, one that gives companies access to a “refined” repository of data, self-serve analytics, and dashboard tools to improve decision-making across a variety of organization functions. Introducing Evolv Insights™our powerful, SaaS-based analytics application.

By leveraging the rich data from Express and its machine learning and AI engine, Evolv Insights™ provides security and operations professionals with a single, easy-to-use, self-service dashboard to view, review, analyze and gather insights, from their screening and venue entrance. Example data types are granular 5-minute visitor arrival curves, total venue visitor counts, system detection performance, identified threat category counts and comparisons across multiple business dimensions including sites, entrance doors, event types, system detection settings, time periods and more. 

And this is just the beginning. Future integrations of additional Express sensor data, 3 party data sources, social feeds like weather, and rich venue enterprise data will expand our ability to provide more predictive and prescriptive venue relevant insights.

Data and actionable insights to optimize operations

Until now, security teams have been forced to make operational decisions based on biased judgement and anecdotal inputs, collected manually under the pressure of time. With automated data collection and actionable insights, security teams move from reactive management and intuition-led decision making, to proactive, data-informed readiness. Resulting actionable insights will empower security teams to transform security, operations, and the holistic visitor experience.

• Simply Report on Security Performance to Leadership – Quickly review aggregated performance across the install base. This “snapshot” provides unique situational awareness and enables a holistic view of customers’ Express systems to optimize performance. This view is especially helpful when showcasing system performance to leadership teams.

• Data-driven Improvements to Security Posture – Access individual scanner, location and detection setting comparisons. Drilling down and comparing system performance related to clear rate, visitor counts, arrival curves, and more, enables root cause analysis and inspection by event types, venue locations, individual entrances, and singular scanners.

• Partner with Operations Teams to Deliver a Better Visitor Experience – Review the density of visitor arrivals with a color-coded heat map and correlated time-series view. Anticipated patron arrivals across seasons, weeks, days, and specific hourly trends by entrance and event type is available. Understanding these load times helps to more effectively plan staffing to provide visitors and employees with a welcoming, line-free experience.

Security seat at the table and value center

The ability for security professionals to advance a “data beats opinion stance” and to provide actionable recommendations across the enterprise will elevate the interaction and effectiveness across functions. Security equipment and leaders will no longer be viewed as a “necessary evil”, but as a coordinated and integral part of overall venue success.

If data is the new oil, analytics is the new refinery!

It’s always nice to see your work recognized, so it was gratifying to me and the entire team here at Evolv Technology to learn we earned an Artificial Intelligence Excellence Award from the Business Intelligence Group. The award is particularly meaningful because it goes to companies that “bring AI to life and apply it to solve real problems.”

That certainly describes Evolv, which uses AI to fundamentally transform human security screening, which until Evolv, has had to rely on a nearly 100-year-old metal detection technology, purpose-built for finding metal as the name implies. And, as we all know, in today’s world, we carry metal every day – our smartphones. So, it’s about time we start differentiating between a metal that is a threat, and a metal that is not.  

Evolv’s use of AI enables our Evolv Express® touchless screening system to screen some 3,600 people per hour, about 10 times the rate of an outdated walk-through metal detector. It does so without requiring most people to slow down, stop, get frisked, or empty their pockets and bags. That’s a particularly important point during the pandemic; this touchless technology allows for social distancing and requires no contact with people or their belongings – attributes a recent Harris Poll found to be important in getting people back to schools, live event venues, and workplaces. 

It’s fitting that our award fell under the “automatic target recognition” application category, one of the earliest applications of radar. As radar was upon its debut, I like to think Evolv’s use of AI for screening is a technological leap forward today. 

Screening technology takes a giant leap forward

A traditional metal detector transmits an electromagnetic field that triggers an alarm upon the detection of metal, so it either finds metal or it doesn’t. If it does, you know the drill – it’s off to the guard with the wand, perhaps a pat-down and emptying of your pockets and bags, and likely another pass through the metal detector, back and forth like a yo-yo. It’s a time-consuming and highly physical interaction and I posit; do you really want to find every bit of metal?

Evolv’s technology combines AI technology with sophisticated state-of-the-art sensors which together not only detect metal but can determine the type of metal and shape of the object. That’s important on a couple of fronts. 

By looking at the data from a wide range of firearms, consumer electronics, and other common metal objects, certain consistent patterns emerge in the metals used, their dimensions, etc.  By applying AI technology, these patterns of metal content and shape can help identify what the object is – a cell phone, a set of keys, or the like. By differentiating between benign objects and threats, there’s no need for people to empty their pockets or bags. 

Well-trained AI and state-of-the-art sensors 

A number of technologies come into play to deliver on that kind of accuracy. 

Our AI model has been trained on nearly 50,000 object scans, including multiple types of firearms along with everyday items that people carry in their pockets or bags. 

Equally crucial is our sensor technology. We use transmitters and receivers that operate in the ultra-low frequency radio wave spectrum. That spectrum is able to deliver the best characterization of properties, enabling us to detect those different types of metals. 

And using multiple other sensors to account for distinct environmental conditions, our software can self-calibrate in the measurement results, to maintain high levels of accuracy. 

Unsung hero: data cleaning and pre-processing

One other ingredient in our secret sauce, and a key to what makes the system effective in real-time, is data cleaning and pre-processing. I think of this technology like a goalie in soccer; they tend to get little fanfare or glory (although plenty of blame), but for a team to excel it needs a good goalie. The same goes for AI when it comes to data pre-processing. 

Pre-processing happens on-site as people are coming through the Evolv Express system. We take all the data that’s coming at us, then factor in any interference nearby along with a series of filters that help us isolate the signals we really care about – the objects people are carrying. By the time we hand off data on a given subject to our AI engine, the data is clean, focused, and crunched into a useable format. The end result is an AI that is robust, efficient, and simple, relatively speaking. Of course, operators don’t need to know anything about the technology itself. While Evolv Express may be full of sophisticated technology, it’s simple to use.  

Harnessing the power of AI 

Hopefully, this gives you some sense of the power that AI brings to everyday applications like screening – and how it’s a sea change from the traditional metal detector. While the technology behind Evolv Express was in development well before anyone ever heard of Covid-19, it’s clear it offers an effective solution to keeping people safe from weapons and intruders, and socially distanced and safe from health threats as they return to schools, ticketed venues, and workplaces. 

I’m gratified that the folks at Business Intelligence Group could see the value in Evolv Express and saw fit to recognize us with an Artificial Intelligence Excellence Award.

In view of today’s announcement, I wanted to provide a little more color about how this all relates to our mission and why this moment is so important to that mission. People who join Evolv, including me, come here because we want to make the world a safe place to live, work, learn, and play. We think of ourselves as the human security company because we want security to be less invasive, more human and effective. 

I believe this mission is now more urgent than ever because we’re the only company democratizing security in a way that will actually make a difference. That’s a bold statement, but we’re living in a time when bold action is required. Democratizing security is going to be a huge effort, and I believe we’re much more likely to pull it off as a public company.  Here’s why we’re so passionate about doing this right now, in this way.

The world is more dangerous than ever before. There were 661 mass shootings in the United States in 2020, a 40% annual increase in a year when most gathering spaces were restricted or shut down. New gun purchases were up 64% last year in the United States, a country that already had more guns than people. US CDC research says 40% of adults reported recent battles with mental health or substance abuse during 2020, with the prevalence of anxiety up 3X and depression up 4X year on year. Some of that anxiety may recede as we come to terms with the pandemic, but all those guns are still out there and the polarization and inequality that drive many acts of violence remain. In this chronically volatile environment, keeping weapons out of gathering spaces must be a top priority for every venue and facility.

Consumers demand touchless experiences everywhere. Even before the pandemic, seemingly every aspect of the consumer experience was going touchless: payments, tickets, retail, bathroom fixtures, doors, minivan hatches, you name it. Crowded security lines and hands-on bag checks were just a nuisance in the past, but now they are unthinkable. No one wants security guards touching their stuff or their person without good reason. The future of the security experience must be touchless and fast.

Analog security processes won’t cut it anymore. Traditional security products are too slow, costly, and error prone for today’s world. Even the most motivated well-trained guards can only do so much, especially when they are fighting a flood of nuisance alarms from outdated analog technology that can’t tell the difference between a gun and a phone. As I wrote last year, I believe that the future of security is fully digital.  This digital transformation will not only reduce costs, but also unlock innovations that transform the experience from a trial to be endured into a social gathering to be enjoyed.

Security screening isn’t just for airports and jails anymore. It comes as no surprise that very few of the 661 mass shootings in the U.S. last year happened at airports or jails, where security screening is mandatory. The shootings happened at all the other places where people gather: schools, industrial workplaces, offices, malls, places of worship, and stadiums. These facilities need the protection that security screening provides, but they’ll never deploy it at scale until it costs far less without the jailhouse or airport experience. That’s what we do, and we’re now ready to scale it up.

The barriers to democratizing security have fallen. Security screening operations based on our technology costs up to 70% less than traditional screening based on walk-through metal detectors, and we do it up to 10 times faster. And we offer our technology under a modern annual subscription pricing model that reduces up-front costs and gives customers access to future product enhancements. Our customers tell us that we find weapons their old systems would have missed, that their employees and visitors love the experience, and that the promised cost savings are real. In summary, it is now possible for most large facilities to keep dangerous weapons out while keeping visitors, students and employees happy.

The capital we raise through today’s transaction will help us build toward realizing our vision and accomplishing our mission. That means extending our product portfolio, ramping up our sales and marketing activities, and scaling up production of our current products. Being a public company provides access to capital for these activities both now and in the future.

The SPAC approach to becoming a public company has been fantastic because it not only accelerates the whole process of becoming a public company, but also allows us to work with the team at NewHold. Their deep networks, expertise, and experience will be very useful as we rapidly scale our disruptive businesses.

Where is the pace of innovation, ideation and data heading? It’s a substantial question with multiple answers. Technology and those behind it are at their crux problem-solvers, and the world still has plenty of problems to solve.

In looking at technology’s future, Evolv started the year utilizing its next episode of Digital Threshold Live to talk about innovation, the art of the possible, tech trends that are emerging and what’s next.

Host Anil Chitkara, Evolv Technology Co-founder and Head of Corporate Development, invited Bilal Zuberi, Partner at Lux Capital and Evolv Advisor, to the show. Lux Capital focuses on “investing in people inventing the future.” Zuberi has a passion for startups that solve big, practical problems. His insight and experience brought lots of hot topics to the surface during the conversation. 

Zuberi’s Story

Zuberi is a Pakistani immigrant that came to the U.S. for school whose father joked he should learn to make toothpaste.

“My dad told me to learn how to make toothpaste, because it was expensive, but they don’t teach you that studying chemistry,” he said.

What he did learn would fuel his American dream story. After earning his Ph.D. from MIT, he went from academia to industry.

“I wanted to make an impact on a greater number of people,” Zuberi said.

And he has by investing in companies that bring a greater value to society through technology that helps all and pushes humans to the next frontier. 

The Source of Innovation Has Shifted

Zuberi also spoke about the major changes with innovation. The patent system began the invention economy, but innovation was top-down until the past few decades, starting with the military, then commercial, then the consumer. 

The consumer technology evolution turned this around, as risk capital became available on the basis of an idea. Zuberi cites the iPhone is a great example. The touchscreen was a consumer product before it moved to other applications. That paradigm shift sets up where the world is now on innovation.

Tech Trends and Themes

So, how does Zuberi make investment decisions? Many times, it’s a process that starts with one company and plots a path. 

“We invested in a company that made satellite antennas, and they told us about a company producing nanosatellites, and then that led to a company using machine learning and AI to process satellite imagery. Then it was a cloud company to hold the data,” he said.

The themes he’s currently most excited about are biocomputation and simulations. Simulations allow you to model the physics of the space then throw in many different variations of what could happen. This type of application is very conducive to security in venues.

“With scenario modeling to plan, then real-time responses improve, [it’s about] turning data into how to respond, not just what’s happening,” Zuberi explained. 

Simulation can lead to better decision-making and making people and places safer. While the technology used in such an application isn’t unique, as it could be replicated, the differentiator is the speed of innovation.

What Did CES Show the World about Innovation?

To cap the conversation, Zuberi and Chitkara spoke about this year’s virtual Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Trends that Zuberi picked up on relate to our current world.

“We’ve brought things outside of the home to the inside—education, healthcare, work, food, which leads to new problems and new technology,” he said. 

Business models for technology are also evolving. First, it was sell something, then sell something better in two years. Then it was sell the hardware and the software. Now, the hardware is free, but the subscription is the revenue generator.

Other key topics included automation and specificity – the idea of a solution that’s smarter and more targeted, not simply automated, trends in sanitization, the infrastructure our world will need to better accommodate innovative technology solutions, and more.

The service is what matters now, Zuberi believes. He also noted that there’s a quote of “software eating the world.” The answer? Data and simulation can fill it back up. The trick is to use the data deliver better solutions and experiences.

You can view the OnDemand version of the webcast by clicking on the video below.

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