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New Digital Video Surveillance Tool Will Find Your Archived Face in a Crowd

by Caleb Johnson on April 1, 2010 at 06:30 AM

For some time, businesses have used digital video surveillance for security and other purposes. But there's been a problem with this system; the footage is often cumbersome to search. Now, a company has developed a search engine for archived digital video surveillance footage, making it much easier to peruse.

According to Scientific American, the tool, which was developed by 3VR Security, Inc., allows users to search footage that's stored on a single server for objects or people, based on many characteristics: time, location, individual camera, motion, color and so on. When archiving footage, the system puts a numeric value on every object in each frame, so these values are later used to pinpoint a particular object, time or location. "The image is stored as a series of points, each with a different value, similar to the way a thumbprint is digitized and stored," 3VR founder and chairman Steve Russell told Scientific American.

The Houston location of Hilton Americas has spent more than $100,000 to install three of these new surveillance systems in the 1,200-room hotel. Since first testing the system last November, the Texas hotel has used the search engine to locate lost luggage by using color and shape as criteria. It has also been used to monitor the employee entrance with the system's facial-recognition software.

Well, one logistical nightmare for security officials might be solved. All that's left is that creepy, haunting feeling that we are being watched... [From: Scientific American]

Tags: camera, criminal, DigitalVideo, hilton hotels, HiltonHotels, search, searchengines, security, surveillance, top, video

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