Axon announced a partnership with the Phoenix Police Department on Friday to supply its officers with virtual reality (VR) training procedures before entering the field.
The partnership makes the Phoenix Police one of the first US law enforcement agencies to employ a VR training platform, and Axon will supply them with hyperrealistic immersive training solutions that simulate civilian-facing scenarios such as domestic abuse calls.
Axon’s VR training service also simulates firearms commonly used by law enforcement officers such as a Glock or a TASER 7. To operate the virtual weaponry, trainee officers hold a physical representation of a gun that contains the core mechanism of each weapon like cartridges.
Inside an Axon simulation, officers have six degrees of freedom (6DoF) and can interact with digital humans in complex situations and scenes.
Chris Chin, Vice President of Immersive Technologies at Axon, said that the simulation constructs experiences as close to “real-life as possible.”
He added:
“We actually have our taser device, as well as a Glock sidearm, that you can actually employ within the scenario and deploy as you would in real life.”
Additionally, the VP said that his firm’s objective was to “protect life and obsolete the bullet in public safety.”
Positive Feedback and Scaling
According to Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego and Police Chief Jeri Williams, feedback on the immersive training course was positive. Gallego added that 81.4 percent of officers felt Axon’s immersive training platform prepared them for frontline deployments.
The platform also works to provide officers with behavioural training to develop critical thinking and de-escalation skills.
On Tuesday, Axon revealed that its VR Simulator Training, which includes various enterprise-grade features like collaborative spaces, is now available as a portable and cost-effective immersive learning solution.
The news comes after ArborXR teamed up last year with Axon to deploy its immersive VR training content library to US public safety workers. The partnership enabled Axon to scale its training resources to a fleet of headsets seamlessly for management teams to deploy compatible devices across workforces.
