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May 20, 2005

Smart Cameras in Philly

From Philadelphia's WPVI.com: Smart Cameras:
I haven't looked at the video yet (its Friday night), but I think
they will show a demo of the smart cameras in operation.

A few weeks back, Philadelphia police started testing so-called smart cameras. They wanted to know. Deputy Commissioner Charles Brennan/PHILADELPHIA: "Is the camera smart enough to alert us if something goes wrong? IBM said, 'You know what it may be.'"

With the help of those experts from IBM and a couple of actors, Action News re-created one of the city's most notorious unsolved crimes, only this time a camera was keeping an eye on the area where a female jogger was pulled off the path as the suspect tried to sexually assault her. We watched the re-enactment on a P-C miles away at police headquarters.

The smart camera is programmed to alert police to suspicious activity along the jogging trail. The programmer highlighted the danger zone. As our actor grabbed the woman, an alarm sounded and the computer instantly saved the video of what happened seconds before and several seconds after. Peter Toro/Network Architect: "The instant they hit this zone. It'll cause a trigger. So let's see what happens. There you go, okay."

Behind the art museum, a similar camera is at work. Only that camera alerts police and starts recording when someone stands near a car for too long. It's an attempt to try and catch people breaking into cars. No one has to watch the monitor 24/7. The camera signals the alert and saves the video on its own.

Posted by rshah at May 20, 2005 05:01 PM

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