IBM Smart Surveillance System (Previous PeopleVision Project)

The IBM Smart Surveillance system (S3) is developed by the Exploratory Computer Vision Group in IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. The system is a middleware offering for use in surveillance systems and provides video based behavioral analysis capabilities. Release 1 of the Smart Surveillance System provides two components

Smart Surveillance Engine (SSE) which provides the front end video analysis capabilities.
Middleware for Large Scale Surveillance (MILS) which provides data management capabilities.

Operational Capability: The S3-R1 system draws on some of the Smart Surveillance technologies created by IBM Research. S3-R1 provides the following functionality.

Web based Real Time Alerts including Motion Detection, Directional Motion, Abandoned Object, Object Removal & Camera Move/Blind: User Designed Alerts: Specified using simple SQL like interface.
Web based Event Search using Object Type, Object Size, Object Speed, Object Location, Object Color, Track Duration & Compound Queries
Web based Event Statistics including Distributions & Moments

Commercial Availability: The S3-R1 system is currently available to end customers on a pilot basis. Business partners can also license the technology for product development.

Application Scenarios While being able to provide real time alarms to “pre-programmed” events is useful, the ability to search through event data and understand patterns enables new “security strategies”.

Force Protection: Understanding long term patterns of activity and the ability to search through events can help identify potential vulnerabilities.

Border Monitoring: While real-time alarms are useful, reacting to a large number of real time alarms is infeasible. Understanding patterns of violations for effective deployment of patrols is critical.

Large Scale Investigations: In large scale investigations like the Washington Sniper incident, the ability to sift through large numbers of surveillance video tapes to identify commonality is essential.

Smart Surveillance Technology Base:

Object Detection in the presence of distraction motion
2D Object Tracking: Multi-object tracking with occlusion resolution.
Object Classification: View independent object classification.
3D Object Tracking: Precise 3D location using standard cameras.
Multi-scale Tracking: Automatic PTZ Camera control to track objects.
Multi-camera Handoff: The ability to track an object across cameras.
Face Cataloging: Captures faces at large distances from the camera.
XML Metadata Representation for object and its motion attributes.
Extensible Engine Architecture for plug and play video analytics.
Real Time Event Indexing: Scene events are instantaneously available for searching in a distributed database environment.
Web service interfaces for Event Search & Retrieval support the rapid application development of customer specific applications.
Scalable Backend System: COTS database technology allows for both distributed surveillance and scalability.

IBM Smart Surveillance System (Previous PeopleVision Project)

Smart Surveillance Technology Base:

Research Areas: