Smart Tech Foundation Pledges to Fund Groundbreaking Advancements in Access Control Technology for Firearms and claims to want industry insiders to help create products that would be used by gun owners.
California –-(Ammoland.com)- Silicon Valley’s tech community is launching a global challenge aimed at incentivizing new, early stage, and experienced innovators to develop technology to prevent gun-related injuries and deaths. Smart Tech for Firearms is a first-of-its-kind challenge that will unite global innovators to accelerate developments in the firearms industry to reduce violence.
The Smart Tech Foundation has identified access control technology as an area with strong potential for saving lives, and is requesting proposals for technology that reliably authorizes approved use—and blocks the unauthorized use—of firearms and associated ammunition systems. Teams interested in competing for grants and prize money, totaling at least $1 million, can apply beginning January 28, 2014 online at www.SmartTechFoundation.org. A panel of expert and industry-leading judges will review the proposals and allocate funds directly to innovators to help build an ecosystem of innovation and address gun violence through free market forces.
The Challenge will kick off at a morning press conference to officially open the proposal process. Innovators will be coming from locations around the globe to share their stories and demonstrate technologies already in development. Featured speakers include Detroit-based engineer and inventor Omer Kiyani of Sentinel, who was a victim of gun violence as a youth, and innovator Ben Tomb of Salus Security Devices, who has partnered with the grandfather of six-year-old Ben Wheeler, killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting, to develop a smart locking station for firearms.
The press conference will be followed by an open Q & A session with featured innovators who have pledged to participate in the Smart Tech for Firearms Challenge. Representatives from the following companies will be available to speak one-on-one with media about the groundbreaking technology just on the horizon:
- Armatix: Smart System consists of a radio-controlled watch that is responsible for gun access and use.
- Everlokt Corporation: Safe Access Ammunition (SAAMO
) is a patent pending bullet control technology that offers an easy, cost-effective way to modify existing guns for public safety. - Allied Biometrix: Dynamic Grip Recognition uses 32 sensors in the gun’s grip, which, like voice-recognition technology, can be trained to recognize a particular person’s grip pattern profile and discriminate between authorized and unauthorized users.
- Salus Security Devices: Protector XT is a biometric locking station for long guns that uses fingerprint recognition technology to secure the stirrup, the center box and a locking arm.
- Sentinl: Identilock mechanism covers firearm trigger until authorized user’s fingerprint unlocks the device and causes it to fall away. Includes manual override key.
- TriggerSmart Technologies: User-unique childproof RFID smart gun for which only the authorized user can fire the weapon.
- Yardarm Technologies: Yardarm technology recognizes the handling or movement of a firearm, and immediately notifies the owner in real-time via mobile application.
About Smart Tech Foundation
The Smart Tech Foundation was formed in 2013 with a mission to foster innovation to reduce gun violence. Through the incentive challenge model, Smart Tech Foundation aims to unleash the entrepreneurial energy of America to propel safety and social wellbeing forward. In order to foster this ecosystem of innovation, they are launching a series of four global challenges in the areas deemed to have the most significant impact on the reduction of gun violence, including firearms, big data, community safety, and brain health. Grants and prize money totaling at least $1 million are available for each challenge and will go directly to innovators.
About Smart Tech for Firearms
For the first Smart Tech Challenge in the series, teams will be asked to submit proposals for the development of technology for a firearm and/or associated ammunition systems, which reliably authorizes an approved user and blocks an unauthorized user of a firearm, and develop a plan that will take their innovative product to the consumer market. Teams can enter the Challenge at one of four stages of technological readiness: with a design only, a prototype of smart technology not on a firearm, a prototype of smart technology applied to a firearm, and a tested prototype of technology applied to a working firearm accompanied by a plan to scale to market. Interested innovators can submit a proposal through March 31, 2014 at www.SmartTechFoundation.org for consideration.