The 10 Frisco ISD and Plano ISD students originally were planning on creating a new exhaust pipe for cars that would break down carbon dioxide molecules to combat the excess amount of CO2 in the air. “However, that idea was completely disregarded on October 1, 2017, the day of the Las Vegas mass shooting. With the occurrence of the Las Vegas shooting we all came to a consensus and decided to tackle a problem that is plaguing the United States which can be easily solved by a somewhat non biased solution.”
From planning to prototype
January 11, 2019
Over the span of many months, the ten students worked together to meet and decide which route they should take in order to achieve what they wanted.
“The process was extremely difficult to say the least,” Syeda said. “Our first step was to the problem which was: the large influx of mass shooting in the United States. The next few steps were to see, how can we create a solution that won’t anger the right and or the left side of the political climate. We came to the conclusion that science will be the best route to take, thus we decided to create the SecureGun.”
The gun is designed to safely be used in public places by utilizing GPS technology and geofences to ensure the gun is armed only when it is needed.
“Over the course of nearly a year we continued working on the actual elements of the semi automatic rifle,” Syeda said. “The SecureGun is a smart semi automatic rifle that can see and know where it’s shooting at. It has a camera on the front that detects what exactly the gun is pointed at – a human, a crowd, a target, or an animal – and there’s a GPS that would differentiate between a gun free zone, a hunting ground or a shooting range with the use of geofences. We also have a GSM module that would alert the authorities if the gun was to be tampered with and lastly there’s a motor that would lock and unlock the gun depending on where the gun is and what it’s shooting at. The motor will either allow the gun to shoot a bullet per 20 seconds or allow it to shoot at whichever rate the gun was originally set to. The next step was to create a prototype, to see if the gun can actually work, and fortunately it does, so far we have the camera and the GPS working.”
To implement artificial intelligence technology, the team had to go through many different prototypes.
“We had to feed thousands of photos of humans and animals to make sure the gun could accurately distinguish between humans and animals,” Qazi said. “We had to implement a camera, GPS, and GSM to account for all the different situations in which a shooter could attempt a mass shooting.”
The students were mentored by the founder of DiscoverSTEM, Mirza Faizan. The process was filled with obstacles, but the students eventually succeeded in creating a prototype.
“There were some challenges in collaborations,” Faizan said. “When you work with different members with diverse backgrounds, that’s bound to happen. But sometimes, these challenges escalate very quickly unless fixed on time. Sometimes they were so preoccupied that proceeding with the innovation became a challenge. But eventually we did it.”