Hanwha Vision unveils 2024 AI product lineup and updates: Intersec Dubai

Asmag.com speaks to Fakhri Limdiwala, Country Manager of Hanwha Vision MEA FZE, at Intersec Dubai, about its latest innovations: AI tech, Wisenet VMS and product releases in the pipeline for 2024.
 
Hanwha Vision (formerly Hanwha Techwin) made the headlines in March 2023 when the company announced its rebranding move that better reflects its expansion into the vision solutions business. This move comes amidst a strong 2022 financial year that saw the company marking an unprecedented 47.5% revenue growth (2021-2022).
 
Soon-Hong Ahn, President and CEO of Hanwha Vision, in a previous interview with asmag.com, explained this new direction, saying:
 
“In recent years, we continued to invest in areas that can serve as future growth engines, such as AI and the cloud. Our new mission is to leverage our vision technology with future growth engines to solve the pain points of customers in a variety of industries and provide vision solutions that can truly benefit and add new value to their business. We believe that the new company name, Hanwha Vision well represent our vision and new business direction.”
 
With that in mind, we spoke to Limdiwala about Hanwha’s approach to customizing its products and solutions to meet specific customer demands and preferences in the Middle East.

Intersec Dubai: Solutions tailored for the Middle East market

"When serving customers in the Middle East, you must factor in the environment and the harsh conditions that your equipment needs to operate in. Our range of solutions that we offer to customers in the Middle East are engineered specifically to deliver exceptional performance and durability even under the harshest operating conditions,” said Limdiwala.

Key sectors such as hospitality, retail, residential, industrial, and commercial will experience substantial growth in 2024, alongside heightened security challenges and demand for faster data capture and analysis.

On this, Limdiwala shared: “Hanwha Vision has continually tried to talk work closely with its customers and partners to devise next-generation technologies that meets their most demanding requirements.”

Industry solutions at the booth this year includes Hanwha’s Road AI solution featuring edge-based AI traffic management technology that supports GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) country license plate recognition, as well as an AI-driven fallen waste detection solution consisting of 4K AI cameras that can detect waste (e.g., water, sand, green or bulk waste, etc.) for smart, clean cities.

Hanwha Vision: AI cameras, boxes

"From streamlining retail operations and optimizing traffic flow to building cleaner cities and safer industrial environments, our innovative technology caters to diverse needs. It all runs seamlessly on Hanwha Vision’s robust ‘P series AI cameras,’” said Limdiwala. “With these units, customers also have the added convenience of not needing to change the hardware when they want to use different AI solutions, installing a new AI app is enough.”

New products on show this year include the “first-of-its-kind” 4K, 31X outdoor bullet AI camera (PNO-A9311R) ideal for critical infrastructure solutions and an AI box that transforms any non-AI camera into an intelligent device that is gaining widespread use in retail, industrial and city surveillance applications.  

Upcoming Hanwha Wisenet VMS updates

The market can also look forward to upcoming updates to Hanwha Vision’s self-developed VMS. “Hanwha Vision’s VMS, Wisenet SSM, will have a major update where we are delimiting its throughput. We have teased this update at the show. With the recent strategic collaboration between Hanwha Vision MEA and Dell, we can extend 512 channels of full HD, full frame rate recording on a single server with a single CPU,” shared Limdiwala.

Business intelligence dashboard enhancements

Hanwha Vision also showcased its business intelligence dashboard, empowering decision-makers with data-driven insights from AI cameras. This dashboard can aggregate vehicle and people metadata in real-time, providing a unified view of key metrics.

The year ahead will see the launch of new features and customization options to enhance the BI dashboard software. “Going forward, additional data will be added to provide more holistic BI data to our customers,” shared Limdiwala.

These developments are led by high demand in the region for new technologies and AI to enhance business security and operational efficiency. “They are eager to learn about and invest in new technologies, like our BI dashboard or AI cameras that deliver more data from their installed devices and enable them to make more informed decisions,” he said.
 

Upcoming product releases in 2024

What can our readers expect to see from Hanwha in the year ahead?

• The addition of new 31X low-light PTZ and long-range bullet cameras that complement Hanwha Vision’s security offerings for critical infrastructure.
• An 8-channel AI box to be introduced soon in line with Hanwha’s vision to democratize AI and “address growing AI requirements while utilizing existing installed devices.”
• Smart infrastructure solution with solar smart poles as well as various versions and combinations of Dell servers and SAN storage along with SSM (VMS) to cater to different market applications.

Hanwha Vision’s strategic value

Limdiwala emphasized the advantages of their direct manufacturing strategy, marking a distinct advantage amid an industry marked by diverse production models. “As we introduce new products, we continue to see how our customers and partners value the fact that Hanwha Vision is a direct manufacturer,” he said. “We own and operate facilities to design, develop, test, and build all our products. This is a significant supply chain advantage that Hanwha Vision has over many competitors who rely on outsourcing production to various third parties.”