Video security support solutions by NEC with wearable devices

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Video security support solutions by NEC with wearable devices

NEC has developed a system called “Running Police” that supports security operations with smartphones, wearable cameras and wearable devices.

NEC booth

A wide range of uses

Around the world, there are situations where police goes on patrol and perform their duties donning wearable cameras. While this means they can share images between the scene and the police HQ directing operations, these systems are also effective for providing evidence at a later time, and suppressing excessive chase speed or controlment of police officers.

NEC is developing solutions using wearable cameras to aid in building or facility security and searching for lost children, although there is still no societal consensus in Japan about uses similar to that overseas.

If security staff in event venues and so forth wear these cameras and use them in conjunction with facial recognition they should be able to reliably pick out suspicious characters or lost children from a crowd. Facial photo sharing is also possible with wearable devices and smartphones.

For night-time building security, image processing is done in the cloud which is useful for identifying people in the dark.

Wearable camera side

Wearable camera side (attached to vest)

Shoulder camera zoom

Running police aiming for operations in 2020

It’s safe to say that the technologies for these solutions are already pretty well established. However, there are still some technical issues remaining. The biggest problem is how to share image data with HQ clearly and without delay.

While it’s possible to take video viewing on a smartphone for granted, delays at peak times, block noise and so forth are unavoidable. It also takes bandwidth to upload video from operations sites.

NEC has responded to these issues by developing a unique adaptive video delivery control technology. This technology analyzes communications conditions a minute before and after the previous communication to predict subsequent throughput and send images with optimized amounts of data. This enables minimizations of delay, or block noise, due to packet loss from sending large amounts of data at peak times etc.

Algorithms for darkness image processing enable contrast adjustments and color reproduction, which means headquarters can check images with both the edges of the subject as well as gray areas reproduced.

Aiming for commercialization by 2020, NEC is continuing with development so that products can be released by 2017 or 2018 at the latest.

Adaptive video delivery without control (block noise occurring)