Artificial Intelligence To Move Video Surveillance to New Level

Surveillance cameras are sprouting up in more and more places, forming an ever more powerful tool for solving crimes after they happen. But what about using them to prevent or stop criminal and terrorist acts? This requires that someone, or something, watch these rapidly multiplying video feeds 24-7. And that’s the problem. Paying people to adequately monitor dozens, or even hundreds, of surveillance cameras can be highly expensive. Plus, humans tend to get bored and lose focus staring at security TV monitors hour after hour, day after day. Computerized monitoring would seem to be the obvious answer, but creating software programs that can recognize suspicious activities or suspect individuals has proven highly difficult. However, Rama Chellappa, a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering of the University of Maryland’s A. James Clark School of Engineering, is developing a real-time computer monitoring system that provides some answers to this problem. Chellappa’s artificial intelligence system can reliably monitor surveillance images to detect certain suspicious movements or suspect individuals and alert human security personnel.