INDUSTRY FOCUS
Staying Focused on the Horizon
- By Ralph C. Jensen
- Mar 02, 2021
What a crazy ride we
all experienced in
2020, and it seems
were on that same
roller coaster as we
turn full force into 2021. With the publication
of the March issue, it stirs my memory
of the past 20-plus years of attending
ISC West in Las Vegas.
One thing for certain, security never
sleeps.
From memory lane, my first adventure
at a tradeshow, I walked the floor
somewhat crossed eyed and amazed. One
experience that I’ll never forget is happening
upon a very small both where Fredrik
Nilsson of Axis Communications was
hawking some new kind of camera. My
lack of vision, I walked away from that
conversation, thinking to myself, “that
will never work.”
Wrong. I can’t even begin to explain
how off base I was on this one.
Leap forward more than two decades,
and our lead story in this issue, from Ray
Cooke at Hanwha, details how Artificial
Intelligence, “continues to gain momentum
every day.” This will, according to
Cooke, “make a substantial impact.”
I’m fully aware that if the mind can
conceive a solution, it can also create a
path to bring it to market.
Martin Gren. This Swedish innovator
is the driving force behind the Axis Communications
IP camera. Determined to
share his vision, Gren brought the first IP
camera to life (and it still works, I believe),
many others have followed suit.
Now, we find the IP camera is more
than capable of doing more than capturing
video. AI has become a companion of
the IP camera, the solution being stored
on the edge of the camera and being used
to monitor and manually search through
vast amounts of video.
Once again, from Cooke’s cover story,
“AI can help us not only watch continuously,
but also feed systems that are able to sort,
organize and categorize massive amounts
of data in a way that human operators cannot.
And, it can do so far more reliably than
traditional video analytics ever did.”
One of many reasons AI works so well,
defining characteristics of a detected object
are captured in the image. Examples
are the color of a shirt or trousers; whether
or not a person is wearing a hat, glasses
or carrying a handbag. AI takes hours off
a manual video search of finding that man
wearing a blue shirt and shorts.
What Gren and other started more
than two decades ago has flourished. This
proved to be a seminal moment in video
surveillance and the security industry at
large. Keep your eyes on the horizon.
This article originally appeared in the March 2021 issue of Security Today.
About the Author
Ralph C. Jensen is the Publisher of Security Today magazine.