printer friendly version

Enhance video analytics with Augmented Vision

IDEMIA, known in Africa for its fingerprint and facial biometric solutions, has been talking about the concept of Augmented Identity for some time. In the company’s vision, Augmented Identity is a way of verifying people’s identity in all facets of our lives in a frictionless and convenient manner, yet still ensuring the highest levels of security.

An example of Augmented Identity would be someone at an airport only having to verify their identity once, after which they move throughout the airport, including the boarding gates, being authenticated by facial recognition without having to haul out a passport or boarding card. This could even extend to buying something in an airport store.

The company recently launched the next phase of its Augmented Identity approach with a solution it calls Augmented Vision, a video analytics application suite designed to enhance security in public and private places.

The roots of Augmented Vision are founded in IDEMIA’s four decades of experience in delivering solutions to help the world’s largest law enforcement and civil government agencies protect and serve the public. Augmented Vision’s scalability, as well as its powerful business and investigation logic, are derived from technology that has been field proven to solve complex investigations, and to secure major public and private events.

There is a widespread need across all verticals to leverage video infrastructure better. The prevalence and popularity of CCTV cameras means that today’s control room operators are simply overwhelmed, making both real-time detection of issues and post-event investigations near impossible.

In essence, most organisations are extracting only a very small percentage of available value from their existing surveillance infrastructure. The challenge, however, is not only a human one. The resolution and number of available cameras installed in most organisations means that systems are required to successfully ingest and process massive amounts of metadata, biometric and other information in parallel if they are to be reliable.

The industry is littered with stories of ‘smart surveillance systems’ which have simply been turned off due to inaccuracy or excessive false alarms, creating a completely different, but equally severe set of problems for operators.

This is where IDEMIA’s large-scale system experience is a game changer for the commercial market. Augmented Vision is able to scale to thousands of cameras and deal with high-density traffic environments with even the largest workforces.

The first part of the Augmented Vision suite released, is designed for real-time enhancement of customers’ existing surveillance infrastructure. It can be used for a variety of tasks, from identifying persons of interest, missing persons, and even for access control and visitor management using facial recognition. When identifying VIP guests, for example, the system can recognise them as they move through a facility and ensure streamlined and hassle-free access.

Augmented Vision’s Investigation Suite is designed for handling investigations based on a variety of video or still image data. When searching for one or more people from historic footage, the system is able to immediately present all instances and locations where those subjects appeared. The benefit of the system is that it can identify people based not only on face, but also other distinguishing features.

Augmented Vision includes a variety of analytics which operators can make use of in conducting investigations including facial, silhouette, vehicles, number plate, objects, colour recognition and more. If authorities know a suspect is wearing a red shirt, for example, all people matching that description are immediately presented in preparation for the next phase of investigation, such as facial identification and tracking the path the suspect travelled across the site. Furthermore, the solution includes a forensic tagging feature that adds enhanced metadata to individuals in video footage to assist in easier and faster augmented recognition in future.

Benefits of Augmented Vision

IDEMIA states that its Augmented Vision is a “hassle-free security add-on” based on four factors:

Easy to integrate. Using open API standards, solution providers can easily integrate Augmented Vision with other systems that manage videos, customer relationships and security, including access control.

Easy to implement. Augmented Vision uses off-the-shelf hardware, including IP cameras, networks, servers, and where possible, existing infrastructure.

Scalable. Augmented Vision caters to a wide range of configurations, adapting to local deployment conditions and requirements. It supports a centralised or distributed architecture and can cater for multiple sites.

Adaptable. The easy-to-use interface delivers the needs of the customer at the touch of a button. This simple design and execution functionality enables customers to use Augmented Vision without any complex processes or time-consuming training sessions.

Share this article:

Further reading: