Intelligent cameras

It’s an incredibly powerful combination. Computer processors, advanced audiovisuals, virtually infinite storage of data everywhere, advanced programming languages and of course global networking, both cabled and wireless, the possibilities that their combination generate are limitless.

Applying the above ingredients to the recipe, new applications — or apps if one prefers — are introduced every day and one has hardly the time even to read about them. Some are short lived while others become global phenomena, depending on public acceptance and usage.

Alongside huge success stories like for instance WhatsApp instant messenger and the exponentially growing dependence on cloud storage usage, the most striking, the trendiest apps are those that rely on surveillance cameras. 

Thanks to falling prices, to greatly improved image quality and simple connectivity to all networks, surveillance cameras are everywhere. With the typical, average model costing between JD40 and JD60, terrific high definition image, infrared night vision so efficient that the camera can virtually see in near total darkness, consumers and professionals just love them.

At home or at work, indoor or outdoor, in most public places, whether surveillance is justified or not, there is a clear invasion of these cameras everywhere; not forgetting police traffic surveillance units that are found on most streets today, for speed or for security control.

The networking alone is priceless. From your smartphone, and wherever you may be in the world, you can see a live feed of the images captured by the camera you installed in your house living room. It’s simple, easy and inexpensive. And of course it can be noise or motion triggered so as to work only when there is a threat of any kind in your house or anything unusual going on.

However, there is even trendier than trendy “dummy” surveillance cameras. Intelligent cameras are on their way to impress you even more and take you faster to the future of high-tech.

It is actually not the camera itself that is becoming brainy, but the software post-processing that it performed on the images after they are taken.

In a first phase images are analysed, faces recognised and the entire scene decrypted, including context, location, background, sound, language detection, and so forth. Most of the technology is already available. Facebook for instance has instant, automatic face recognition and geotagging.

Once images are analysed and understood by the app, as surely as if not better than a human being would, decisions and actions are taken — and this where the truly futuristic part comes in.

An example. An intelligent surveillance camera installed in your living room will be able to tell who in your absence has entered the house, at what time of day, and what the person is doing, before alerting you with a message or a prompt on your smartphone. A burglar trying to crack a safe or to force-open a drawer will not trigger the same alert as a relative of yours (that the camera would of course recognise) coming to water the plants. Eventually the camera may send a red alert to the nearest police station in the first and just a gentle text message of information to your smartphone in the second.

The variations are open to imagination. In the streets such analysis and possible subsequent action will help detect abnormal activity and prevent crimes, for instance.

Giant groups like Time Warner Cable and Huawei have solutions that can be purchased and implemented now, not tomorrow.

Intelligent surveillance cameras are nothing but a step further towards improved implementation of artificial intelligence in its broad meaning, and towards real-life, consumer domestic robots.