How VSaaS is a ‘smart move’

Video surveillance as a service (VSaaS) has become a hot topic, benefiting users who do not necessarily have the budget to purchase equipment. Besides retail and residential applications, VSaaS is increasingly used in fleet management, helping operators gain better oversight of their drivers and vehicles.
 
During a smart city expo held in Taipei in February, ThroughTek showcased how its cloud platform, called Kalay, can benefit fleet management. The platform enables playback, storage, and analytics of video data transmitted from onboard cameras. Additionally, the platform can also relay video or send push notifications to the user’s smart device should an event occur.
 
The Kalay platform works with various third-party hardware to ensure safety of drivers and passengers on the move. “One of the hardware partners that we work with, for example, has a camera with analytics that detects when a driver is dozing off. Once it happens an alarm will sound to wake him up,” said Kenny Wu, Director of Sales and Business Development at ThroughTek. “Our role is to ensure an alert will be issued to the operator who can know what’s going on. A video clip or a push notification will also be delivered to the mobile device of the operator or someone else based on the user’s setting as an extra precautionary measure.”
 
“Or, when an accident happens, we make sure that the video footage is stored and relayed to relevant parties for post-event investigation,” he added.
 
The Kalay platform can also perform analytics on data collected from vehicles. This can help various end-user entities, such as cities and insurance companies, to find transportation trends and patterns as they make relevant service improvement plans.
 
Besides fleet management, VSaaS also has other applications. According to Wu, his company now plans to embed facial recognition into the Kalay platform to target users in retail, school and residential sectors.
 
“For retail, they can know more about their customers, for example the proportion of men to women, whether a customer is just a regular customer or VIP, and how often do VIPs come to the store,” he said. “We collect this data and then run a report for the end user to help them make better sales and marketing decisions.”
 
“Further,” he added, “cloud-based facial recognition can benefit other sectors. For residential, for example, it can be integrated with the smart lock, so that once someone who is a family member is detected, the lock will open automatically; the user does not have to bring a key. Or, for enterprises, instead of using cards, employees can just have their faces scanned and enter, creating a more frictionless experience.”