Video surveillance clearly on Motorola’s screen
DENVER–Motorola is wasting little time in leveraging last year’s acquisition of peer-to-peer network developer MeshNetworks. The company offered a preview of its Intelligent Video Surveillance and Control solution—which will ride over Motorola’s 4.9 GHz mesh network—at the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials conference here.
The key to the system is its intelligence, which sets it apart from conventional video surveillance systems. It is capable of recognizing unusual events based on parameters set by dispatchers. One demonstration of the system depicted a small truck that had lost its load on a busy highway. The system provided an alert based on its recognition that the vehicle and its load—which had spilled onto the pavement—were in that position too long. The alert was in the form of green circles that appeared on the screen around both the vehicle and the spilled load. Eventually, the circles turned red.
The system is designed to help dispatchers who are monitoring multiple screens make better decisions, said Motorola Director Michael Fabbri. “IVSC is all about managing a lot of video inputs,” he said.
Fabbri added that the video seen by the dispatcher also could be transmitted to in-vehicle laptops over the 4.9 GHz network to make first responders safer and more effective.
“There’s nothing like being able to see what you’re getting into,” Fabbri said. “The information can be seen by an officer as he or she is pulling up to the scene.” Another demonstration depicted a person walking across a field at night. The person was very hard to pick up because of the night conditions and a bright light in the distance that was shining directly into the camera. When the person entered the area, he immediately was encircled in green on the screen; when he reached a questionable area—again, based on parameters set by the dispatcher—the circle changed to red, then returned to green when he left the area.
“The system helps you see something you might not be able to see normally,” said George Shapkarov, multimedia business manager for Motorola.
The system employs fixed and mobile cameras. In another demonstration, motion detectors flagged a person who had entered an unauthorized area. The pan-tilt-zoom camera immediately spun around to pick up the person and provided a clear close-up shot that would have made it easy to identify him. At the same time, an alert e-mail was sent that contained a video file attachment that once opened provided a playback of the incident.
A “bare bones” system designed for a small security force can be acquired for $150,000 to $200,000, said Shapkarov, who added that Motorola would start shipping the system in October.
