Mysterious Fireball Caught On Security Camera

Mysterious Fireball Caught On Security Camera

CCTV Video Footage shows a fiery object streaking across the sky in America's Midwest - but what was the object?

Smart Security CCTV Detects Criminal Behaviour

WHAT'S the difference between a suicide bomber and a cleaner? It sounds like the opening line of a sick joke, but for computer scientists working on intelligent video-surveillance software, being able to make that distinction is a key goal.

Current CCTV systems can collect masses of data, but little of it is used, says Shaogang Gong, a computer-vision computation researcher at Queen Mary, University of London. "What we really need are better ways to mine that data," he says.

Gong is leading an international team of researchers to develop a next-generation CCTV system, called Samurai, which is capable of identifying and tracking individuals that act suspiciously in crowded public spaces. It uses algorithms to profile people's behaviour, learning about how people usually behave in the environments where it is deployed. It can also take changes in lighting conditions into account, enabling it to track people as they move from one camera's viewing field to another.

To improve the tracking of an individual at an airport, the system can also learn the routes people are likely to take - straight from the entrance to check-in, say. It can even follow a target as they move in a crowd, using the characteristic shape of the person, their luggage and the people they are walking with, to follow them as they walk between different camera views.

Samurai is designed to issue alerts when it detects behaviour that differs from the norm, and adjusts its reasoning based on feedback. So an operator might reassure the system that the person with a mop appearing to loiter in a busy thoroughfare is no threat. When another person with a mop exhibits similar behaviour, it will remember that this is not a situation that needs flagging up.

While video analysis tools already exist, they tend to operate according to rigid, predefined rules, says Gong, and cannot follow a large number of people across multiple cameras situated in busy public spaces.

The Samurai team last month demonstrated the system to commercial partners including BAA Airports in the UK. The researchers claim the prototype system successfully identified potential threats which may have been missed by human operators, using footage collected at Heathrow airport. The Samurai team has funding to continue refining their software until the end of 2011.

"The use of relevant feedback from human operators will be a very important part of these technologies," says Paul Miller, of Queen's University's Centre for Secure Information Technologies in Belfast, UK, who is leading a project to develop a video-analysis system capable of predicting assaults on buses. "The key is developing learning algorithms that work not only in the lab but that are robust in real-world applications."

Privacy and the new CCTV surveillance technology

Privacy protected with the new CCTV surveillance technology. (Image: 3VR)

Most people are unhappy about being filmed by CCTV, in case the footage is used against them in some unlikely way. Now 3VR, a surveillance technology company has come up with a method of scrambling the images of anyone in CCTV film who is not a suspect.

3VR, based in San Francisco, says it should reassure members of the public who do not wish to be identifiable to police or lawyers, or even TV crime-stopper shows.

Face-recognition Algorithms

The technology uses 3VR's recently patented face-recognition algorithms to home in on known faces in crowds. An image-scrambling algorithm then blurs the faces and bodies of those who are not of interest and encrypts the blur pattern. So, no one but the operator of the technology can unscramble it.

An image-scrambling algorithm blurs the faces of those in the footage who are not of interest

Monitor Known Felons

"This allows you to search for suspects, known felons and people on watch lists, but without capturing massive databases of apparently innocent people," says Stephen Russell, 3VR's chairman. The company aims to supply the equipment to banks and retail chains so they can analyse CCTV footage for known suspects. Criminals who install card skimmers on ATMs are a likely target.

Open to Abuse

The idea is unlikely to satisfy all privacy advocates, since scrambled footage is still open to abuse. "A safer approach is to record images, only when machine analysis detects something suspicious and that way there is no recording of anything, for 99.99 per cent of the time," says Mike Lynch of data-analysis company Autonomy.