Hands Tied
More affordable central processing also means that more channels can be supported, Bharadwaj said. “Ideally, all analytics need to reside inside the camera. Analytics that need ‘inter-camera' collaboration need to be handled smartly. However, there are two practical challenges at the present time.”
One is the absence of a common VCA interface across camera manufacturers , Bharadwaj continued. “Ideally, application developers would want to code/ test once and incorporate this into different cameras from multiple vendors. This will provide flexibility to the end customer in choosing any camera vendor for different stages of implementation. At the present time, if the customer chooses an on-camera VCA solution, they are constrained to using cameras from vendors that are supported by the on-camera VCA company for further expansions.
VCA companies that provide serverbased implementations are more camera-agnostic and future-proof.” The other is a current lack of collaboration between VCA developers and camera manufacturers. “Ideally, the camera vendor would provide hardware and basic software only and leave all other features and camera resources to be used by the VCA or other application vendor.
To use a PC analogy, Dell makes the hardware, and Microsoft or Linux provides the operating system; it is entirely up to developers to create any application that they want,” Bharadwaj said.
Driving Further Growth
All technologies have limitations. Having an educated and knowledgeable customer ensures that the system will be successful, Li said. “There have been many instances where we have walked away from projects, as we did with the Commonwealth Games in Delhi, even though we had been involved with the previous Games in Melbourne. Sometimes, end users have no understanding of the technology that they are asking for, and would not be able to deploy it effectively. In situations like that, it is better to walk away from the project rather than let it affect reputation.”
Some say organizations avoid VCA because of their resistance to change. However, Otterspeer feels that it is more about caution of risk rather than resistance to change that is preventing VCA from gaining better traction. “In security, customers are very careful with chances. They want solutions they can trust. We need to earn that trust to be able to sell our products, and that is why we need to educate the market.”
Most installers know what they are doing. They are trained and have been using the same system on a daily basis, but they need to explain to the end user the difference between CSI and reality, Otterspeer continued. “Demo software provides the opportunity for the customer to try all the different elements in real-life situations and see if it works in their security environment. They can play, for instance, with color detection on finding guys in red shirts. This allows users to make educated purchases and maintain realistic expectations.”
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●Tim Chandler,President of CoastalCOMS Division, Coastalwatch
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Sometimes, it is the terms used when speaking to customers that give the wrong impression of what VCA can really provide, said Tim Chandler, President of CoastalCOMS Division, Coastalwatch. “For instance, the term ‘people counting' often is understood as ‘an exact count of people' and nothing else. However, we often find that's not what customers really need to answer their business or workflow question. VCA in our world is a tool for a decision support manager.” Ultimately, the technology's capability alone is not what one should focus on, but rather the combined relevance of VCA output to a specific business question.
“We had once been asked to count on a beach that easily had 10,000 people on it constantly coming and going, and ultimately had to ask the customer what decision tree they were really trying to support,” Chandler said. “Did they want to know how many people were on the beach each exact second? Did it matter if the beach suddenly lost or gained 150 people over the next minute? In the end, a range applied to a timeline was more the output they were looking for, which is serviceable with a reasonable confidence level versus trying to get an exact count in real time.”
Part 2 of this feature will look at how VCA is deployed in real life and key factors to consider when evaluating a solution.