DARLENE project against crime and terrorism kicks off!

On September 21 and 22, 2020, the DARLENE project ‘Deep AR Law Enforcement Ecosystem’ held its online kick-off meeting. This new Research & Innovation Action, funded by the European Commission’s programme HORIZON 2020, is coordinated by CERTH, Centre for Research & Technology Hellas, one of the leading research centres in Greece with important scientific and technological achievements.

The meeting  brought together 15 partners from 10 European countries. The project consortium is formed by a well-balanced group of research organizations, industrial players, SMEs and end-users active in the project and who will be actively involved in the user evaluation and validation activities.

At the core of its concept, DARLENE is envisioned as an Augmented Reality (AR) system for Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs), consisting of a variety of technological components, which aim to enhance human physical and mental processing capacity to increase Situational Awareness (SA) and aid in tough decision-making under various loads of stress.

DARLENE will offer European LEAs a proactive security solution, which will provide detection and recognition, combining cutting edge technology and public security in all security verticals.The project will, therefore, develop practical and beneficial policing applications through the use of affordable, lightweight and inconspicuous AR glasses. Such applications will capitalize on cutting edge research that will combine with AR Technology to create innovative methods for combating crime and even terrorist acts. To align technology development with actual security needs and requirements, DARLENE will build a community of LEAs organization and security stakeholders that will guide the development process and evaluate the entire DARLENE ecosystem. In this regard, DARLENE foresees extensive demonstration and training activities for LEAs while the entire solution will be demonstrated and validated in realistic scenarios during the pilot phase of the project, thus paving the way to its field deployment and commercial uptake.

The project will last 3 years and will conclude in August 2023.

 

The fundamental components of DARLENE consist of:

• a wearable micro-computer Module and
• a head-mounted display (HMD) unit embedded with tracking and sensing hardware, capable of running virtual 3D rendering applications in real time.

This basic system will further be enriched with wireless and mobile hotspot transceivers, which will enable the CPU module compartment to act as a 5G access point.

Youbiquo’s role in the project is to:

• Augmented Reality platform integration and technical assessment;
• DARLENE Wearable & Patrol Car Edge Computing Nodes;
• Testing and technical validation;
• Market analysis and sustainable business models;
• Lead the Exploitation post program.

 

The project’s factsheet is available at CORDIS: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/883297/it

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 883297.