Smart camera system could enhance stadium security

A team of academic and industrial partners across Europe have demonstrated a prototype camera system dubbed Smart Eyes that analyses recorded data in real time and then zooms in on unusual scenes.

The system consists of a fixed surveillance camera that covers a certain area, and two ultra-active stereo cameras.

Marina Kolesnik, a scientist at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology, a SEARISE research partner in Sankt Augustin, said the system’s software mimics the processing in a human’s visual cortex. It begins by assessing the degree of movement for each pixel in the scene and picking out the most active areas. 

Kolesnik said over a certain period of time it will learn typical motion patterns and store this as normal. So when something abnormal happens in a scene, such as a supporter jumping out of the stands and behind a fence, she said, it will identify it as a salient event. The active stereo cameras will then zoom in.