Successful Technology Combination Improves Perimeter Security

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A camera platform fusing two technologies – Lidar and video surveillance – is offering better sensing capabilities for perimeter security and smart city applications.

Lidar, which uses a stream of lasers to create a 3D image of the surrounding area, is one of the technologies that make autonomous vehicles possible and has also been touted as a potential game-changer for perimeter security applications.

Video surveillance has also seen its fair share of innovation in recent years, predominantly around intelligent video analytics with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions powered by a new and improved wave of machine learning algorithms. Unlike the video analytics that were highly touted and then quickly fizzled a decade ago, many believe AI has real staying power and will eventually revolutionize the industry.

Although Lidar provides a user with a lot of information about a scene, oftentimes an image from the visible spectrum is needed to help properly identify objects. 

Oyla integrates Lidar and video together at the hardware level, and in a way that inherently fuses the 3D and video data. Bringing the two domains together in a single solution, the product creates an image that can greatly improve the accuracy of video analytics. 

The 3D-aware surveillance camera resolves previously intractable issues of variable lighting, occlusion, and the true distance and scale of objects. 

The AI-based video surveillance system augments the video with a proprietary 3D sensor. The 3D sensor is integrated with the video sensor at a hardware level, and collects 3D data across the video field of view at up to 50 meter range. The 3D data stream is independent of the video stream, and so statistically improves the accuracy of the video AI. This 3D sensor provides its own infra-red illumination and so can operate in complete darkness. It can also be used to define very accurate intrusion detection perimeters.

The technology is based on an open platform, according to securityinfowatch.com. The camera is currently being piloted by several customers.