Austin Community College's (ACC) team, Justice for All, was awarded third place in the 2021 National Community College Innovation Challenge earlier this month.
According to a statement, ACC spent months of online meetings working on their project, before being able to meet in person to celebrate.
“We've been communicating on Slack and through Zoom and Google Meets, I guess since last October and November. So it's definitely a treat to actually see people in the flesh,” ACC student Cameron Primm said in the statement.
Other members of the team included Tina Avent, Justin X. Hale and Cimone Almestica; all are students in the User Experience (UX) program. The team's project was selected out of 400 total entries this year. Through the process of the competition, students were mentored by ACC IMPACT Lab Coordinator Eric Hepburn.
The team's project, called OASIS, is a program that "analyzes data from smart wearable devices like body cameras to help understand reactions during a crisis," and then automates a footage review which, searching for signs of acute stress in officers, helps provide departments with information before a stressful situation turns violent, the statement explained.
“OASIS intends to take all the body camera footage generated daily by police departments and use artificial intelligence to analyze it. Right now, with the vast amount of footage, it is only reviewed at random or high-profile incidents. OASIS will indicate signs of stress or concern earlier,” Tina Avent said in the statement.
The Justice for All team plans to continue pushing the software further and begin developing coding to enable them to take it to actual police departments for real-life use.
The Community College Innovation Challenge is a nationwide competition that focuses on students' development of STEM solutions applicable to real-world challenges that foster innovation, research and entrepreneurial skills.
The Community College Innovation Challenge is hosted by the American Association of Community Colleges and the National Science Foundation.