Learn

The terms, in plain language.

AI and security come with a lot of acronyms. This page explains the ones used across Airman Vision without assuming a technical background.

Core ideas NVIDIA tools Open source tools Security terms

Core ideas

How the pieces think.

Local AI: AI that runs on a computer you own, in your building, instead of in a vendor's data center. Your questions and files never leave.
LLM (large language model): The kind of AI behind chat assistants. It reads text and writes text. On the appliance it runs locally.
Computer vision: AI that looks at images or video and recognizes what is in them, such as a person, a vehicle or a weapon.
VLM (vision language model): A model that understands both pictures and words. It can watch a clip and answer a question about it, which is why it makes a good second check.
Open vocabulary detection: Finding things from a plain description, like "red jacket near door 3", even if the model was never trained on that exact label.
Retrieval (RAG): Letting a language model look up the right passages in your documents before it answers, so replies are grounded in your files and can cite them.
AI agent: A model that can take actions, like clicking in a browser or opening a file, not just chat. At Airman Vision a person approves each action.
Synthetic data: Training images created by simulation rather than recorded by a real camera. Useful when the real event, like a drawn weapon, is rare.
False alarm rate: How often the system raises an alert when nothing is actually wrong. Lower is better, and it matters as much as accuracy.
Edge and core: The edge is the small computer near the cameras that reacts instantly. The core is a larger system that reviews, learns and sends improved models back out.
Benchmark: A repeatable test that measures accuracy, false alarms and speed so different models and hardware can be compared fairly.
Inference: Running a trained model to get an answer. Training teaches the model; inference is the model doing its job.

NVIDIA tools

The stack underneath.

NIM: Prepackaged, optimized containers for running AI models. Think of it as a ready to run engine for a given model.
NeMo Retriever: NVIDIA's toolkit for searching documents so a language model can find the right information before answering.
NeMo Guardrails: A way to write safety rules around a language model: what it may discuss, what it may do, and what it must refuse.
Nemotron: A family of NVIDIA language models, one of several used in the appliance prototype.
Cosmos: NVIDIA models that generate realistic video of the physical world, used here to create training scenes.
Omniverse Replicator: A 3D simulation tool for producing labeled synthetic images with control over lighting, angles and objects.
TAO: A toolkit for training and fine tuning vision models without building everything from scratch.
TensorRT: Software that optimizes a trained model so it runs much faster on NVIDIA GPUs.
DeepStream: A framework for running AI on many live video streams at once.
Metropolis: NVIDIA's platform and partner ecosystem for vision AI in cities, buildings and security.
Jetson: Small, low power NVIDIA computers built to run AI at the edge, next to the cameras.
DGX: NVIDIA's large AI systems used for training and heavy analysis at the core.
Morpheus: An NVIDIA framework for cybersecurity AI that inspects network data at high speed.
RAPIDS cuDF: Lets data analysis that normally runs on a CPU run on a GPU instead, often many times faster.
Video search and summarization blueprint: An NVIDIA reference design for searching and summarizing video with language, used for plain English footage search.
RTX 5060 Ti: A consumer NVIDIA graphics card. The local agent prototype runs on one today.

Open source tools

Used in the prototypes.

Ollama: A simple way to download and run open language models on your own computer.
Open WebUI: A chat screen, similar to familiar AI assistants, that talks to local models.
Qwen and Gemma: Open weight language model families that can run entirely on local hardware.
MCP (Model Context Protocol): An open standard for connecting AI models to tools, such as a browser or files on a PC.
YOLO: "You Only Look Once", a popular family of fast object detectors for real time video.
CNNs and vision transformers: Two different designs for image models. Part of the research is measuring which works best for security video.

Security terms

Why it matters.

CMMC: Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, the Department of Defense standard that suppliers handling defense information must meet.
Control mapping: Matching technical findings to the specific requirements, or controls, an assessor checks.
Phishing detection: Spotting fake emails or links designed to steal credentials or plant malware.
Digital fingerprinting: Learning the normal behavior of each user and device so unusual activity stands out.