When it comes to crowd monitoring, facial recognition is currently very popular. At Berlin's Südkreuz station, for example, the Federal Police and the Ministry of the Interior carried out a pilot project for automated facial recognition for one year - and were very satisfied with the results. In more than 80 percent of the cases, software had correctly identified the subjects.
But for that to work, you need relatively high-resolution images. In addition, you have to frontally get the people in front of the camera and should install the cameras so that they are not far away from the action. That limits the possibilities.
Chinese start-up Watrix now believes it has found a solution to these problems. With the help of artificial intelligence, the company wants to recognize people by their body shape and their gait. And from every direction, not only from the front, and from up to 50 meters away. The necessary video images would not have to come from a high-resolution camera, says Watrix boss Huang Yongzhen the news agency Associated Press (AP).
AP
Watrix CEO Huang Yongzhen
This idea is not new. For decades, scientists around the world have been researching similar approaches. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the topic was already illuminated at the end of the 1990s (PDF). And Spanish and British researchers are also developing a system that requires people to walk over a special sensor mat so software can recognize them in the aisle. You imagine, for example, to use such an entry control at airports.
Ten minutes for an hour
The system of Watrix supposedly only needs a few cameras, it evaluates the movements based on video material. However, the necessary software is very complex and requires a lot of computing power. She extracts the silhouettes of the persons to be seen from the video and evaluates their movements. This does not work in real time. To analyze one hour of video, the system takes ten minutes. Nevertheless, Watrix boss Huang sees good chances for his software in the Chinese market.
The police in China are already working on networking the databases of surveillance cameras installed throughout the country. The systems are already being used to identify individuals in crowds by facial recognition. In addition, security officials from the Muslim-dominated province of Xinjiang have already expressed interest in the Watrix software.
"Good business"
Chinese columnist Shi Shusi told AP that he would not be surprised that such controversial technology is being adapted faster in China than in the rest of the world. After all, the Beijing government's social control, which is a measure of any deviation from the norm, would be very important. That's why China can do good business with surveillance technologies.
Huang Yongzhen, in turn, hopes that his system will be used in parallel with face recognition in the future. Surveillance is far from being the only way to use Watrix gear recognition, he suggests. For example, they can be used to identify people in need, such as when an elderly person has fallen.
Surveillance critics will hardly reach this as an argument for using the system.