Several evolving technologies have combined to create new opportunities for video to serve as an information resource. Advances in image compression and broadband wireless communications along with falling costs for imaging sensors have made the installation of video cameras easier and cheaper for a widening range of locations.
Now, users are looking for systems that can help them use these image streams effectively, by generating alerts and extracting information. The key to providing such help is video analysis.
Like any evolving technology video analysis goes by many names, including intelligent video, smart video processing, and video analytics. Whatever the name, however, the goal is simple: extracting important information from the image stream.
The exact nature of the information extracted, and the system’s further use of that information, varies with application. But it can include such tasks as area security, object classification and counting, feature extraction and recognition, and movement tracking (Fig. 1).
The roots of video analysis go back many years to video motion detection in security systems. Yet now, expanding broadband capability is opening up new opportunities and thus pushing the demand for video analysis.
“Adding broadband to video changes things,” said Danny Petkevich, director of the video and vision business unit at Texas Instruments. “It makes the adoption and installation of video technology easier, allowing it to solve problems it could never efficiently address before.”
A part of this application growth comes from a shift from analog video cameras to IP-based (Internet Protocol) digital cameras. According to Michael Long, video product manager at Analog Devices, most video cameras for security systems will be IPbased by 2012. Long estimates that 25% to 50% of these cameras will have some form of video analysis processing built in.
ANALYSIS CAPABILITIES HAVE GROWN
Meanwhile, video analysis has grown from its motion detection roots into a more capable and robust technology. Early systems needed a highly controlled, stable environment in terms of lighting and camera position to generate accurate results.
However, the technology has been making steady progress toward eliminating such constraints, according to Nik Gagvani, chief technical officer at Cernium. This progress enables video analysis to extract information from cameras in a widening range of installations.
True to its historic roots, video analysis has area security as its largest application market. The technology has gone far beyond simple motion detection, though. Security applications of video analysis include such refinements as video tripwires (sounding an alert when someone approaches a protected area) and leftobject detection, such as unattended luggage at an airport (Fig. 2). Analysis can also reveal when objects that should be at a given location are moved or missing.
An offshoot of meeting security needs is the ability of video analysis to categorize objects in the image, such as identifying people or automobiles, and then count them as they pass through the field of view. This ability has many uses, from monitoring the occupancy rate of a facility or parking garage to measuring traffic flow on the highway.
According to Vaidhi Nathan, president and CEO of IntelliVision, as many as 20% of traffic intersections in the U.S. use video cameras for functions such as controlling lights to manage traffic flow based on car counts. Nathan also notes that online trafficflow summaries such as Yahoo and Google Maps derive travel speeds from cameras counting cars.
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