AI can do some amazing things when analyzing video. Real world uses range from creating apps that automatically identify flora and fauna, to figuring out the general demographics of people in a crowd, to compiling detailed statistics on any number of technical and scientific subjects.Cloud based video analytics make all of these jobs a hundred times easier and far less time consuming than manual review methods. Today we’re going to talk about how the Aipix Telecom VSaaS Platform provides video analytics services to new and existing VSaaS applications.
What is Video Surveillance as a Service (VSaaS) and What Are The Important Features for End Users?
Video Surveillance as a Service (VSaaS) is a Cloud based method of displaying, managing, and performing analysis on all kinds of streaming video. VSaaS has tons of applications in natural science, advertising, opinion polling, security, traffic control, and event management.
When a Cloud provider or telecom decides to offer VSaaS, they often contact Aipix to see exactly what our platform can provide in terms of structuring, analyzing, and reporting on video data. There are three main features that we see as key to satisfying the needs of their end users:
- With AI-based enhancements VSaaS platform needs to be able to watch for certain events and contact the client or their designated third party automatically if those events happen. This contact can happen however the end user prefers, using mediums such as via E-mail, Text/SMS, an online messaging service, or piped directly into a security dashboard.
- Secondly, the service that the telecom or Cloud provider offers needs to be API friendly. The end user will want to integrate their own software suites or open source analytics tools, such as OpenDataCam.
- Finally, it needs to be extremely simple for the end user. They need to be able to pick the video event that they want to take action on, and then select the action that is to be taken. That’s it. Whenever possible, highly technical jargon and complex coding requirements need to be eliminated from the process. Most end users are looking for a turnkey, menu driven experience.
What Are Some of the Key Video Analytics Features that Aipix Provides on the Backend?
When a Cloud provider or telecom sets up their VSaaS, they’ll want to show off the most common business functions that their end users are asking for. Aipix Telecom VSaaS Platform will allow them to demonstrate the four most in-demand functions of enhanced video analytics.
Most use cases involve picking out people and vehicles, line crossing and camera damage events. Based on that analysis, one or more events are triggered. By using Aipix’s advanced AI to detect a combination of these events, the majority of important occurrences are covered.When monitoring people, the most useful tool is facial recognition. This can be used as both a security feature and a customer service aid. On the security side, being able to identify visitors on CCTV is massively important, of course. On the customer service side, knowing who made a delivery, or who is entering an employee-only area can inform an end user’s course of action. Facial recognition can also tie directly into an access control system, allowing building or zone entry based on who is present.
One of the most common VSaaS requests on the transportation side is license plate recognition. This is useful for government applications, parking management, and all manner of vehicle tracking. As an example, traffic controllers might want to know how many out of state travelers they get during tourist season, or how long specific vehicle types take to make their daily commute.
Barrier detection is important for line crossing and entity counting activities. If you wanted to know how many people attended an art exhibit, for example, you could set up monitoring across all entryways and keep a single running tally. This function has applications in natural sciences, flow analytics, and security.
Disruption detection is a vital feature. Without camera damage and blocking detection, automated services can be disrupted. In order to alert the end user that a camera needs to be checked on, Aipix can send out an immediate alert when the feed is significantly disrupted. This is a hedge against vandalism, intentional attacks on the security system, or accidental mishaps that would impact site security.
All of these functions are available on Aipix Telecom VSaaS Platform, as well as far more advanced analytics, as we’re about to discuss.
Aipix’s Fire Detection Video Analytics to Complement Acсess Control and Fire Alarm Systems
One of Aipix’s advanced features includes the detection of smoke and fire in a building. It’s assumed that the end user has the IP cameras set up at the prescribed angles and that they’re properly authenticated.
Whenever there is visual activity that might be smoke or fire, the camera captures a series of candidate images. These images are sent to the VSaaS facility for processing.
The images are parsed by Aipix on all spectrums that the camera can detect. If the result of the analysis is either smoke or fire, a ‘smoke/fire detected’ event occurs, and the signal is sent back to the access control system and security dashboard. If there’s no match, operations continue as normal.
Depending on the end user’s policies, a number of things might happen next. Security on site can be informed, and at their discretion they can trigger the fire alarm. In most countries, a fire alarm activation defaults all security doors to an ‘open’ or ‘unlocked’ status. A call can be automatically made to emergency services, reporting details of the smoke or fire sighting.
Aipix’s fire detection video analytics can provide a more comprehensive early warning system than smoke detectors alone. Because the AI analysis includes more subtle indicators than just heat and obvious smoke, it is possible that the fire will be detected before any sort of fire or smoke alarm triggers. Then if security deems the fire warning to be a legitimate event, they can activate emergency signing and lighting, directing people out of the building and towards their emergency gathering points.
It can also act as a rapid fire alarm confirmation system. It can quickly bring up the closest video feed to the fire alarm’s location, and provide visual confirmation. This means less false positives, and avoids having to physically send someone into a dangerous area to check it out.
This is just one of Aipix’s advanced video analytics functions that can be used to keep people safe and improve on human reaction time by automating critical processes.
Useful Backend Capabilities of Aipix
In addition to the core capabilities mentioned above, Aipix utilizes backend features that are extremely desirable in an AI video analytics service:
CPU Based Processing: In modern Cloud architecture, scaling CPU capabilities is preferable to requiring a stack of GPUs. Individual GPUs are far more expensive than CPUs. VSaaS requires flexible resource allocation and instant scalability, both of which are accomplished quite nicely with CPU based processing.
Pipeline Data Processing: The process of categorizing and warehousing video data before analysis takes place adds a layer of flexibility to VSaaS. Tasks can be property prioritized and completed fully without having to artificially cap processor time in order to keep up with a live data stream. The video data is also left available for deeper analysis, enabling customers to plug in their own APIs for specialized operations.
Flexible Framework: Adaptability to new business cases is highly desirable in a modern VSaaS. You always want your service to adapt to your business process, not vice-versa. When a framework integrates with existing security dashboards, logging systems, and IoT devices, it saves on integration, support, and training costs across the board.
Multi-Tenancy: Organizations can manage their own virtual architecture by assigning users privileges that give them access to specific monitoring resources.
Building Your AI Video Surveillance Service On Aipix
Cloud providers or telecoms who are building or enhancing their VSaaS offering need to cover all of their end users’ cardinal use cases, allow them to use third party APIs, and make their offering simple to implement and build upon.
The Aipix platform lets telecom carriers and Cloud service providers create, brand, and launch their VSaaS product quickly and easily. Enterprises with their own dedicated Cloud infrastructure can also leverage Aipix as a complete surveillance and video analytics solution. Aipix is Cloud agnostic, meaning it functions on VMs hosted by any of the popular Cloud providers (AWS, Google, Azure, DigitalOcean, etc.) and on the majority of private Cloud solutions (VmWare, OpenStack, etc.).
Contact Aipix for All of your VSaaS and AI Needs
Aipix can make life safer and smarter for your users, their families, and their businesses. To see how we can enhance your VSaaS platform, one of our industry experts can run a live demo for you, and answer any questions that you might have about the software, costs, and installation timeframes.To arrange a demo, or if you have any other questions, feel free to contact Aipix and make use of our expertise.
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