Teenager creates AI tech used by first responders
By Sarah McGrew
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SAN JOSE, California (KCRA) — Like most high school seniors, Jacob Trentini, from Danville, is focusing on his classes (mostly AP) and getting to graduation. In addition to preparing for the next step into higher education, he’s also working part-time at an artificial intelligence startup in San Jose, developing drone software used by first responders.
“I pretty much wrote all of the AI pipeline,” Trentini said. “Including car detection and actually the algorithm to track the car itself.”
He’s been working part-time at Firebot Labs for over a year now. The company’s CEO, Jonathan Collazo, said the overarching goal is to help first responders better respond to everything from wildfires to car crashes using drone technology.
“If we can cut down the time between a person being injured or a fire happening and services arriving on time, it would mean life to death or paralyzed to not paralyzed. It’s a really big, emotional thing for us,” Collazo said.
What Collazo didn’t expect when starting Firebot Labs was to hire a high schooler.
“I expected, based on what I heard, that he was going to be a smart kid. If not, they wouldn’t be asking me to put him in to work with us, but yeah, he definitely punches above his grade level,” Collazo said. “We learned that he was not just talented, but he was incredibly talented, and now he’s a big part of what Firebot Labs does.”
At the startup, Trentini helped develop an autonomous drone platform to help first responders assess scenes before even arriving.
“The goal really is to have eyes on the scene when the firefighters jump into their truck,” Trentini said.
Luckily, this job is also Trentini’s passion, and it’s something he hopes to pursue long after graduation this spring.
“It’s really satisfying to just see our solution actually making an impact. There’s times where you just build something just to build something, and this is one of those things where you really want to get it right and get it out there quickly because they really need it,” he said.
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