People Counting

Video surveillance belongs to the everyday life in many public areas these days. Airport operators for example do their passengers have under surveillance from check-in until going aboard and from arrival until leaving the safety area of the airport. “Intelligent video analysis makes it possible to determine whether an object is moving or standing still, and the software is able to detect non-permitted behaviour automatically. This relieves security staff of various tasks,” says Dr. Ivo Keller, Managing Director of Vis-à-pix. The Potsdam-based company is a specialist provider of intelligent 3D video analysis software. In contrast to conventional 2D solutions, Vis-à-pix products analyse not just images, but spaces and situations.

People Counter analyses the content of video streams and automatically detects the number of persons visible. It is ideal whenever it is important for security reasons to precisely count passers-by and customers. The 3D software makes it possible to protect airports, entrances to big events and even ferryboats from overcrowding, as it reliably detects how many people enter or leave a certain zone. This can be achieved even with big crowds.

 

The Vis-à-pix software adds another decisive feature by visualising persons and their movements as coloured points moving in a layout. Security-relevant areas can be defined separately for each camera. If a person approaches a room restricted from the public, the point representing this person turns yellow and then red in the layout. If the virtual “entrance line” is crossed, the system raises an alarm. Similarly, an alarm is raised if a person, for example, moves to the wrong direction and thus might enter the manoeuvring area of an airport.

 

The software is also able to detect growing waiting lines or crowds and informs service staff when the number of clients at a checkout till or a ticket counter rises above a certain pre-determined benchmark.

 

Correctly counting passers-by and customers is becoming increasingly important for security reasons. Entrances to big events, airports, or stations must be protected from overcrowding – video analysis is essential whenever you need to know how many people enter or leave a certain zone.