In Sunday’s segment on Sky News Australia (Weekend Edition with Tim Gilbert) we exclusively revealed the results to date of WA Police using Apple’s CarPlay on patrol. Police only need to use voice commands thanks to Motorola Solutions core application. Using CarPlay and SIRI has cut down the amount of paperwork officers are required to do per shift which means more time on the streets. I saw the demo firsthand at Motorola Solutions HQ this week. WA Police has been using the system for more than a year and in this segment I can tell you exclusively what the results are:
WA Police has completed more than 80 per cent of its daily operational tasks within the Motorola Solutions Core application, this includes dispatch, search, reporting and person custody – all the typical functions within an officer’s daily work flow
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Experienced significant cost savings — of around $15,000 AUD per vehicle — by not needing to fit out expensive, after-market mobile data terminals in police cars. Instead, they’re using smart software applications that use the existing, inbuilt media units already available within modern vehicles. That’s giving them vital control during incident response to work ‘heads up and focused on the road’ by using voice control for safe operations and focus when driving to the scene
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Reduced the need to process up to 180,000 handwritten infringement notices every year, replacing them with digital records that can be quickly and easily populated via smartphones in the field.
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Delivered time savings of at least 30 minutes per officer per shift (although that figure is likely to be much higher) by removing the need for record details about incidents with pen and paper notebooks in the field which later need to be transcribed into police databases back at the station.
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In summary, smart mobile apps like these mean officers spend less time at the station and more time out in the field where they can have a far greater impact on community policing, building relationships with people and increase public safety overall.
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Global awareness of what’s happening in Australia – It’s also Motorola’s understanding that the impact of this world-first public safety innovation is reverberating around the world. At least one US police agency is planning to look at what’s happening in Australia with this homegrown innovation and plans to come out here to see and learn about this deployment so they can consider adopting it in their own operations.
MOTOROLA RAZR CONTINUES FLIP PHONE PRICE WAR
Motorola has joined the discounting war in the wake of OPPO’s entry in the flip phone market. The RAZR is now the cheapest out of the trio of phones. Motorola has reduced the RAZR by $200. It’s now selling for as low as $1397. The new OPPO Flip and Samsung Flip 4 begin at $1499. BUT the Samsung is only 128GB – the OPPO and MOTOROLA models are 256GB. This discounting is likely to continue – so make sure you check across the models when you decided to buy.
UNIDEN BABY MONITOR HAS SIMPLE BUT COMPELLING FEATURE
UNIDEN’s Smart Baby Monitor BW6101R, is a dual mode device in 2K (3MP) super HD resolution with handy clamp camera and portable battery backup. The clip is simple but not often found on many baby monitors – that you can trust. The multi-purpose adjustable clamp camera that allows parents to secure the device to the rails of a cot, a shelf, or stand freely on a bedside table or chest of drawers. The included portable battery backup ensures the camera will continue to roll in the case of a power outage or if the camera is accidentally unplugged, providing added peace of mind.
MAKING HUMANOID ROBOTS MIGHT BE WRONG
It appears that people will respond better to robots that are more like toys than humanoid. A study by the University of Cambridge found that people who interacted with robots that were more toy-like, felt a greater connection compared to human-like robots. Over four weeks, 26 employees took part in the weekly robot-led wellbeing sessions. The robots had the same voices, facial expressions and scripts but were different in appearance. The employees had a better rapport with the non-humanoid-like robot. It’s an indication that robots should not look like humans if we are to trust them.
