Public transportation is vulnerable to threats and attacks. Governments around the world are investing more in transportation safety, which in turn increases demand for mobile surveillance solutions. According to research, the mobile video surveillance market will be US$1.55 billion by 2015, at a CAGR of 13.7 percent over 2008 to 2015. The potential lies in not only tightened security for drivers and passengers, but also huge gains in operational efficiency for fleet managers.
Public transportation is vulnerable to threats and attacks. Governments around the world are investing more in transportation safety, which in turn increases demand for mobile surveillance solutions. According to research, the mobile video surveillance market will be US$1.55 billion by 2015, at a CAGR of 13.7 percent over 2008 to 2015. The potential lies in not only tightened security for drivers and passengers, but also huge gains in operational efficiency for fleet managers.
Market Demand
Mobile DVR is an important device within the vehicles. According to the ranking of bus and taxi in some principal cities of 2011 in China, the total amount of the public vehicles in the front 27 cities reaches 174,559. Apparently, there is a large demand for the mobile DVR.
From the year of 2011, the Chinese government has released a series of policies which indicated great concern for the public security, which will definitely boost the mobile surveillance market.
With the increasing living standard and ever complex social environment, mobile surveillance gradually come into view and become a necessity. It will replace the manual work and enhance the surveillance efficiency and the investment will thus keep growing.
Generally, the law enforcement cars require the most rapid and effective tracking and recording while the transport vehicle concentrates on the interior room with easier application environment. Mobile DVR will meet a huge market where the applications see possibilities in logistics and financial convoy.
“Customers may have very personalized demand sometimes, manufacturers need to face the contradiction between mass production and customized service,” said Joe Qiu, Overseas Business Director of TVT. “Nearly all the relevant laws and regulations demand the mature technical solutions, which can be realized with controllable cost.”
Multiple Functions
Generally, mobile DVR is a professional product applying the embedded DVR backed by the digital video and audio coding technology. It adopts the embedded processor and operation system, combining compression and decompression IT technology with GPS and 3G wireless telecommunication as well as the mobile power administration technology.
As a niche market of traditional embedded DVR, mobile DVR is an emerging professional product for the application of audio and video coding technology in the vehicle, incorporating GPS, 3G wireless and USB telecommunication, power management system, all of which could be applied in surveillance of vehicles all day along.
Mobile DVR can be divided into three catalogues according to the functions: traditional DVR which can only realize the local storage; multimedia one that incorporate with entertainment and advertising footages ; advanced DVR refers to the product owning various function such as GPS, driving recording, wireless transmission etc.
Obstacles
Following the irreversible trend of the security industry, networking and intellectualization will be the general direction. Mobile DVR owns a bright future while some bottlenecks still need prompt solution.
Wide Voltage
It is known to all that the output voltage of the vehicle is unstable, about DC 12V or DC 24V, but the traditional DVR demand a steady and stable magnitude of voltage, otherwise, it may lead to the reset or going down of the computer. As a result, a power system that can stabilize the voltage is required between the vehicle output voltage and mobile DVR. Currently most of the manufacturers adopt the design of wide voltage ranging from 8 to 36V in order to adapt to the changeable working environment.
Wireless Transmission
Despite there being multiple technologies in terms of the wireless transmission, 3G finds hardly any room for living in the car as a result of the limited coverage of EDGE and the insufficient bandwidth of CDMA.”The limitation of 3G leads to some uncertain factors in viewing the real-time image, the effects can be probably affected,” said Song Linpeng, Mobile Product of Santachi.
Vibration
Due to the different situation of the vehicles and roads, the vibrationreduction technology becomes the basic requirement for mobile DVR such as the reduction of hard drive rack. “To tackle the vibration problem, we adopt comprehensive solutions based on mechanical, electronic and software parts,” added Song.
Therefore, reducing the vibration of hard disc is the priority among those procedures since this part is the most vulnerable to the damage and the occurrence will make it impossible to record the situation in the car. “We use G-sensor that can induct the vibration energy meanwhile automatically implement read and write administration for the hardware, the statistics can be switched between SD card and hardware, ensuring the safe storage,” said Qiu.
Future Trend
All the design of mobile DVR should coordinate software and hardware, which is the biggest difference from the traditional DVR. It can be seen from the market that mobile surveillance is moving forward into HD, Intellectualization, integration, and standardization.
High Definition
The traditional mobile surveillance industry mainly adopts the ordinary digital camera plus the analogue structure, cost-effective price is its advantage. However, with the upcoming trend of networking, the mobile surveillance industry is stretching into the high-end market?manual monitoring cannot meet the demand of the end users, instead they are looking forward to the intelligent surveillance. High definition has explicitly enhanced the image effects.
Apparently, HD mobile DVR will be definitely the mainstream of future market of intelligent surveillance, which can raise the standard the mobile surveillance industry and have a positive impact on this field. “Mobile solutions share the same basic principles with fixed security systems, but there are unique elements that must be considered for different applications. Take police vehicles. HD is the priority,” said James Wang, Overseas Product Manager at Dahua Technology.
Intelligent Functions
The advantage of intellectualization lies in the application with more added value that is catering to the particular demands of mobile surveillance, for example, when the enforcement cars is moving, the image will vibrate due to the bumping on the rough road.
However, The monitor technicians are likely to feel exhausted for vibrating?but intelligent image can solve this problem, especially in the public transportation, people counting, facial recognition, license recognition can render the better service for the background operations.
Furthermore, the intellectualization of mobile DVR plays an important role in attracting the end-users. As the traditional video surveillance system draw the valuable information on the basis of statistics storage, plus the large work load, which put the security administrators into a bit of bind.
Availability
With more and more users put much emphasis on the mobile surveillance system, it turns out to be the professional solutions from the unitary video surveillance. As one part of the entire operation in the public transportation, the mobile surveillance should coordinate with other devices such as GPS, electronic reporting, card reader, traffic radar in the unified system.
“Our products can read information that is triggered by the vehicle sensors such as the traffic direction. The driving speed can be monitored at any time through GPS and linked to Google Map as well as the video,” said Qiu.
“We have designed interface for the mobile DVR, in case that the new function can be added in such as the over-speed alarm and tire-pressure warning and etc,” said Song.
Standardization
So far, the hardware of security industry has been mature, but the construction of the software system still has long way to go. Different subsidiary system does not match very well as the standard is not unified. Promoting industry standardization demands the mutual effort of government and manufacturers.
Therefore, if mobile DVR can leverage on more intelligent functions, it can be not only bring about the ability of working automatically, but also to be incorporated simultaneously in the entire system. In this case, a huge shift will take place in mobile DVR that could usher in new mission.