[TGE-mail] "smart" video offers an alert to threats

Wed Oct 24 10:43:17 CDT 2007

Something that the residents, police and alderman should talk about to
decrease the likelihood of crime in the neighborhood.

Kevin Liddy

 `Smart' video offers an alert to threats - ; Taking boredom factor out of  
 security systems                                                           
 Hiawatha Bray                                                              
 Hiawatha Bray Globe Staff. Boston Globe                                    
 1,188 words                                                                
 22 October 2007                                                            
 The Boston Globe                                                           
 3                                                                          
 D.1                                                                        
 English                                                                    
 © 2007 New York Times Company. Provided by ProQuest Information and        
 Learning. All Rights Reserved.                                             

 In video surveillance systems, the weakest link is the often bored,        
 distracted human who has to spend hours staring at a bank of video         
 monitors, waiting for something suspicious to happen.                      

 Several Boston area companies say they have found a solution: surveillance 
 systems smart enough to recognize threats, even when their human operators 
 do not.                                                                    

 "It essentially replaces the need for people to watch video," said Scott   
 Schnell, chief executive of VideoIQ Inc., a Bedford firm that was spun off 
 earlier this year from General Electric Co.                                

 VideoIQ is one of several local companies vying for dominance of the       
 market for "video analytics" systems, which can help defeat a variety of   
 security threats, from shoplifters to suicide bombers.                     

 Systems from VideoIQ and Intuvision Inc. of Woburn can automatically spot  
 an intruder climbing a fence or a subway passenger leaving a suspicious    
 parcel on the platform. IntelliVid Inc. of Cambridge makes systems for     
 retailers that can detect a possible shoplifter and electronically track   
 his movement through the store, to see if he swipes anything else.         

 "It's really started to take off in the last two to three years," said     
 Simon Harris, research director for security markets at IMS Research Ltd., 
 a British technology research firm. Harris said that worldwide sales of    
 smart video surveillance systems will be less than $100 million this year, 
 but rise to about $3 billion by 2010.                                      

 Already there are more than 26 million surveillance cameras in the United  
 States alone, according to a 2006 report from IBM Corp.                    

 The research firm iSuppli Corp. said that worldwide sales of surveillance  
 systems will climb from 30 million units in 2006 to 66 million in 2011.    
 But these are mostly systems that require constant human supervision.      
 There are not enough workers to watch so many million video streams. Even  
 if there were, people make mistakes, perhaps fatal ones.                   

 Computers that can recognize suspicious activities can serve as valuable   
 backups to the human eyeball. The smart video systems are programmed to    
 recognize certain shapes, like cars, people, or luggage. They're also      
 designed to learn as they go, in the same fashion software can improve its 
 recognition of human speech. The longer it runs, the better it gets at     
 spotting anomalies.                                                        

 In addition, the systems allow security managers to draw digital           
 boundaries at key points. They can tell the software to ignore people      
 walking past a building, but issue an alert when someone walks toward the  
 front door.                                                                

 The systems identify suspicious objects or movements by surrounding them   
 with a box. For instance, the VideoIQ system puts a yellow box around      
 moving objects that seem problematic, then uses its programming and        
 experience to decide if it is a threat.                                    

 One test video shows ducks and boats on the Hudson River. The system draws 
 yellow boxes around the harmless ducks, but when a boat appears, the box   
 turns bright red. The computer does not dial 911; instead it sends an      
 electronic alert to the video monitoring center, where a handful of people 
 may be tending hundreds of monitors. The smart video system directs them   
 to the suspicious video feed and can replay the event that set off the     
 alarm. It's up to the humans to decide what to do about it.                

 Sadiye Guler, chief executive of Intuvision Inc., a video analytics firm   
 in Woburn, admitted that computers still lag far behind humans at          
 recognizing images. "It's still not as good as a 3- year-old child," she   
 said. That's one reason humans are still needed to make the final call on  
 a suspicious image.                                                        

 Intuvision, a startup funded by grants from the US intelligence community, 
 has attacked the problem using a technique called "task- based attention." 
 This method teaches the machine to give maximum attention to certain       
 events and much less attention to others. Just as a speech recognition     
 program listens to samples of a person's voice to improve its accuracy,    
 the Intuvision system views many images of people and objects and learns   
 to identify them based on shape and size criteria.                         

 A camera guarding a subway platform pays little attention to backpacks and 
 suitcases that are moving. But it locks in on a package that has remained  
 stationary for more than a minute or two, a package that might have been   
 left behind by a would-be bomber.                                          

 "It does a shape analysis," Guler said. "Bag and person sizes are          
 different. The shapes are different."                                      

 Intuvision's product is not yet on the market, but the company is          
 deploying its first pilot system in the Washington, D.C., area. Guler      
 won't identify the user. "I can tell that it is a federal law enforcement  
 agency," she said.                                                         

 While VideoIQ and Intuvision try to tap the homeland security market,      
 IntelliVid Corp. of Cambridge has a different focus.                       

 "We're really the only video-analytics-based company that specializes      
 exclusively in retail," said IntelliVid chief executive Patrick            
 Sobalvarro.                                                                

 It's a massive market opportunity, given the scale of the retail- theft    
 problem. "There's about $37 billion of this stuff leaving stores every     
 year," with about half being stolen by store employees, Sobalvarro said.   

 IntelliVid technology isn't good enough to notice thefts of individual     
 items. But if a sizable number of objects - say, razor blades - disappears 
 from a shelf, the analytic software makes a note of it. The company's      
 patented customer-tracking technology can see which visitor to the store   
 removed so many razors. It can then track that shopper through every       
 aisle, handing him off from one security camera to the next and looking to 
 see what else he picks up.                                                 

 Of course, the system also notes whether the customer heads for the        
 checkout counter or straight to the door. If he tries to leave without     
 paying, the systems sends an electronic alert to security workers.         

 A basic IntelliVid system for a small retailer costs about $10,000. It     
 gets more complex and costly for bigger stores, which can have as many as  
 250 surveillance cameras per location. Sobalvarro won't identify his       
 customers, but said that about a dozen of the nation's biggest retailers   
 use IntelliVid systems.                                                    

 Today's video analytics systems are designed to work with the millions of  
 video cameras already deployed. But a new generation of smart cameras will 
 make the systems more powerful and versatile.                              

 "The trend really is to put the intelligence in the camera," by adding a   
 built-in digital signal processor chip to analyze the video, said Harris   
 of IMS Research.                                                           

 Such systems could be cheaper than today's video analytics gear, because   
 they won't need a separate server computer to collect and process the      
 images. Instead, each camera in the network can be programmed to guard     
 against different threats, because each will have a mind of its own.       

 Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray at globe.com.                            

 Caption: The Intuvision system monitors video streams and learns to        
 identify people and objects based on shape and size.                       

 Philadelphia gets 250 new security cameras                                 
 125 words                                                                  
 22 October 2007                                                            
 06:02 pm GMT                                                               
 Associated Press Newswires                                                 
 English                                                                    
 (c) 2007. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.                       

 PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Philadelphia is getting 250 new security cameras.      

 Deputy Police Commissioner Jack Gaittens says the first of the new cameras 
 will go up in the area of 52nd and Market streets in West Philadelphia.    

 That neighborhood has been plagued by violence for years.                  

 Gaittens says the camera equipment will be able to receive signals from a  
 two-mile radius, so police won't be looking only at one intersection.      

 The first of the cameras should be in operation within about two weeks, as 
 a result of a nearly $9 million deal between the city and Unisys.          

 Authorities hope to expand beyond the 250 cameras in the future.           

 ------                                                                     

 Information from: Tony Hanson/KYW-AM, http://www.kyw1060.com               

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