Tivon students develop weapons detection system

WISDome designed to alert gun-owners if their weapon is stolen

By ANNA AHRONHEIM
Updated: FEBRUARY 9, 2017 22:53
WISDome (photo credit: Courtesy)
WISDome
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Israeli students have developed a system meant to prevent registered firearms being stolen from their law-abiding owners without being detected and to help recover the weapon if it is taken.
The WISDome system, conceived, developed and built by Yuval Maimon and Gabriel Mishmal, students of the ORT engineering school under the Gabriel Kapach and Yuval Fuchs program, was designed to protect individuals against the rising trend of stolen firearms.
The students of ORT Greenberg from Kiryat Tivon, near Haifa, developed the system with the aim at alerting the owner or the competent authorities when a weapon is being disconnected from its holster, removed from a home, or introduced into public areas where the owner is not present.
The project will be presented in the Young Engineer 2017 competition that will be held at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa on February 27, where students from various schools across the country will present projects that aim to improve existing technology or which arise out of societal needs.
Maimon and Mishmal said that the high number of people who own firearms in Israel and the United States has created a problem. While many own firearms for protection, “there are people who choose to use these weapons to damage or injure others. Some of these people steal their weapons from law-abiding citizens who were unable to protect their weapons.”
The system has three layers of theft protection: a communication and GPS accessory embedded into the firearm; cloud software that decides when it is necessary to alert the owner of the gun or relevant authorities; and an application through which the accessory can report the location of the gun through wireless Internet.
The gun accessory, once attached, would be connected to secured wireless Internet, and if a request is sent, the server would be able to locate where exactly the gun is. This information would allow the server to decide whether the gun is in an area authorized by its owner.
The gun owner would then receive a warning from the WISDome application that his weapon has been removed from his home or an approved area. Managers of public places where the system can be installed (schools, hospitals, etc.) would also be able to keep track of unauthorized firearms in their area.