National ICT Australia has developed an operating system and software package designed to recognize and match positive identifications of faces from distance and impaired angles that leaves current technology for dead.
The project, called iBox, has been developed by NCITA's Safety and Security group and has already secured considerable investment from multinational conglomerate Trantek. The technology converts analogue video data into a digital format which can be then used for motion detection, facial recognition, and behaviour prediction.
NICTA iBox research engineer David Snowdon, who developed the operating system, said the system can be used in airports, transit facilities and in other public arenas requiring high-level security.
"iBox overcomes the problems of traditional surveillance and sensory technology because it can be located at higher, lower or more obscure angles while still making a positive ID with far less [facial] information," Snowdon said.
"There is a big push to develop intelligent surveillance; technology needs to be predictive rather than reactive."
Complex algorithms interpret physical characteristics, appearances and mannerisms from the data stream to identify suspicious behaviour.
"It could be used to detect whether someone is carrying a weapon-like object, or if they are planning to jump from a train platform and it can more accuracy match facial characteristics to a database," Snowdon said.
NICTA Embedded Systems CTO, Chris Nicol, said it will retain product IP even though Trantek has bought the final product.
"We will continue to develop the iBox as we always retain the IP for the fruits of our research," Nicol said.
"The project gathered considerable interest and it is fantastic that Trantek is supporting it."
The iBox is about halfway completed with OS development finished, and is part of a series of global developments in 'intelligent video' including IBM and US surveillance vendor ObjectVideo.
