Surveillance System Fault Tolerance via Detection Tracking Coordination
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current surveillance systems rely heavily on human monitoring, which is unreliable due to factors like boredom, distraction, and limited capacity, and also face challenges with high costs, bandwidth consumption, and system customization, leading to inefficiencies and unreliability in detecting and responding to security breaches in real-time.
Innovation Solution
A surveillance system utilizing a mixture of detection and tracking smart camera devices with automatic target detection and confirmation, reducing the need for continuous human monitoring, optimizing bandwidth usage, and implementing a redundant control system for fault tolerance, allowing for continuous coverage and efficient resource allocation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If human guards continuously monitor multiple video screens, then security breaches can be detected in real-time, but guards become overloaded and unreliable due to boredom and distraction
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces the mechanical human monitoring system with an automated computerized surveillance system that uses image processing algorithms and artificial intelligence to detect security breaches. The system automatically analyzes video feeds from multiple cameras, identifies suspicious activities, and generates alerts, eliminating the need for human guards to continuously monitor screens and thereby resolving the contradiction between detection reliability and operator workload.
Solution Approach 2:
The surveillance system performs self-monitoring and self-detection functions through automated algorithms that continuously analyze video data without human intervention. The system serves itself by automatically detecting anomalies, tracking suspicious objects, and generating security alerts, thereby maintaining high detection reliability without requiring human operators to bear the workload of continuous monitoring.
2Reliability
If a large number of guards are hired to view all displays simultaneously, then coverage is improved, but costs increase and reliability remains uncertain as all guards must remain vigilant
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces multiple human guards with a single automated computerized surveillance system that can simultaneously analyze video feeds from all cameras. The system uses parallel processing capabilities to monitor multiple displays at once, providing comprehensive coverage reliability without requiring a large number of guards and thereby eliminating the need to hire additional personnel while maintaining or improving detection reliability.
Solution Approach 2:
The automated surveillance system performs multiple functions simultaneously - it monitors all video feeds, detects various types of security breaches, tracks suspicious objects, and generates alerts all at once. This multi-functional capability allows a single system to replace multiple specialized guards, providing comprehensive coverage without increasing the quantity of personnel required.
3Reliability
If video from all cameras is transmitted to the guard station, then complete coverage is achieved, but bandwidth consumption becomes excessive
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts only the essential video data needed for security monitoring by using automated detection algorithms to identify and transmit only relevant frames containing suspicious activities or objects. Instead of transmitting complete video streams from all cameras, the system selectively extracts and transmits only the portions of video that require attention, thereby maintaining comprehensive surveillance coverage while dramatically reducing bandwidth consumption.
Solution Approach 2:
The surveillance system applies different quality levels to different video feeds based on their importance and content. High-resolution video is transmitted only for areas detecting suspicious activities, while other areas use lower resolution or frame rates. This localized quality adjustment ensures complete surveillance coverage is maintained where needed while minimizing overall bandwidth consumption in less critical areas.
Data Source
AI summary
A coordinated surveillance system uses a larger number of fixed low resolution detection smart camera devices and a smaller number of pan/tilt/zoom controllable high resolution tracking smart camera devices. The set of detection cameras provide overall continuous coverage of the surveillance region, while the tracking cameras provide localized high resolution on demand. Each monitor camera device performs initial detection and determines approximate GPS location of a moving target in its field of view. A control system coordinates detection and tracking camera operation. A selected tracking camera is controlled to focus in on, confirm detection, and track a target. Based on a verified detection, a guard station is alerted and compressed camera video is forwarded to the guard station from the camera(s). The guard station can direct a patrol guard to the target using GPS coordinates and a site map.