VMware presented a demo at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that has incredible potential for police, first responders and any customer requiring a ruggedized device. Piloted by the team at the combined Surrey and Sussex police forces in the UK, the demonstration showed a Tesla car equipped with a small, rugged SD-WAN device and an application using Jenoptik software. The goal is to reduce equipment and complexity and provide tools to change the way policing is done. The demo shows how a vehicle with SD-WAN for policing can become a “office on wheels” for law enforcement applications such as automatic license plate recognition.
Watch the video to discover how VMware SD-WAN™ and VMware Edge Compute Stack could enable secure mobile communications and real-time edge computing across a fleet of vehicles to create an office on wheels. (If you don’t see the video here, click for the YouTube link.)
Dr. Steve Conn, Technical Project Manager, Digital Data and Technology for the Surrey and Sussex Police kicks off the video by describing the genesis of the idea for the demo. The police forces had already rolled out a successful implementation of VMware SD-WAN under budget and ahead of schedule in their physical offices. SD-WAN reduced operational costs by 50 percent and improved the services Surrey and Sussex provides. Dr. Conn then had the idea to put a VMware SD-WAN Edge device in a police car, connect it to body-worn video, and stream live video while driving at speed.
A ruggedized office on wheels for first responders
Brent Wild, Infrastructure and Networks Manager, DDaT, Surrey and Sussex Police, added that VMware SD-WAN not only provided visibility into their network, but also enabled police officers to use systems in a more efficient way. When VMware and the Surrey and Sussex police began to develop the idea of a ruggedized office on wheels, “We looked at the edge devices in vehicles and how that would enable our police officers to move into operational spaces a lot quicker,” said Wild.
VMware’s Gavin Lees, Lead Technologist for UK Policing, noted that simply putting connectivity in the back of a police vehicle became a basis for so much more. When he looked closely at the equipment in a typical police car, he saw “lots of proprietary hardware, lots of discrete solutions, and lots of individual connectivity solutions for those applications.” There was an opportunity to provide more applications using a smaller hardware footprint and the virtualization of the services in the car.
“I can’t think of a better way that we can take technology and improve the lives of people. The police officers, they’re out there saving lives. The use case you brought us, the technology that we’ve provided—if it’s helping those folks do their jobs better, I can’t think of a better use case.”
Sanjay Uppal, SVP and GM of the Service Provider and Edge business unit at VMware
Take a tour of the demo vehicle
In the video, VMware Edge Solution Architect Charles Cockshoot takes us on a tour of the demo’s in-car technology. A vehicle spec server provides connectivity using two modems aggregated with VMware SD-WAN. This provides connectivity to the entire vehicle, all the applications, and Wi-Fi that supports streaming video from the officers’ body cameras and other services. VMware Edge Compute Stack virtualizes applications to take physical appliances out of the vehicle, host and update multiple applications, and then orchestrate and secure them through the cloud.
The video goes on to show the onboard applications provided by partner Jennoptik. Cameras mounted across the car provide license plate recognition, said Cockshoot. The cameras read the license plates. An application running on VMware Edge Compute Stack in the trunk of the car alerts officers if that plate is on a watch list. It then connects into the cloud using VMware SD-WAN to get supplementary information from the police office. This is just the start of bringing together different services with one way to move and share data security.
What used to be a trunk full of equipment—we’ve been able to shrink that down and bring it into just one piece of hardware that you put in the trunk, that can run a variety of applications. What used to be done in hardware is now being done in software. That makes everyone’s lives easier.”
Sanjay Uppal, SVP and GM of the Service Provider and Edge business unit at VMware
Improved community presence and efficiency
SD-WAN for policing in a mobile office could help police forces be more efficient by keeping officers out in the community and better serv the public, said Wild. They can send information back to headquarters and command centers, but also keep doing their jobs while out on the road.
Dr. Conn added an example. When police arrest someone, traditionally they must come back to the office and fill out a lot of paperwork. With an office on wheels that functions as a mobile hotspot, officers can do their paperwork in the police car, saving time. Staying out in the community also makes the police car more visible. The SD-WAN technology allows data such as body worn video footage or ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) to be uploaded directly from the car.
With a secure Wi-Fi access point within the vehicle, police officers can connect their devices securely to the police force network so they can access their applications in the right place at the right time—placing better tools in the hands of the police officer, Lees noted. Instead of having to go back to headquarters and place the device in a docking station to upload footage, officers can now transfer data securely to a cloud service from the car.
