Visualization solution for use at the airport
Introduction
Air transportation is an essential and one of the quickest modes of transportation, used for personal reasons, tourism, and business visits globally. However, with millions of passengers using airports daily, airport safety and security have become a challenging issue in recent years. Furthermore, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the health and hygiene of passengers are significant factors in the operation of an efficient airport transportation system. Therefore, new health and safety regulations have necessitated different airports worldwide to develop smart and efficient technological solutions to improve the safety of passengers and airport workers.
An example of smart solution technologies includes the use of video security to actively monitor airports through the use of current surveillance camera systems to automate digital visual inspections. Under COVID-19 pandemic, the AI solution such as automated crowd monitoring and social distancing can quickly improve the public health and safety. Most of the security video facility services are all connected to the airport security dashboard, such as fire alarms and trolleys. Airport can efficiently control the real-time situation on smart video security system.
However, some regions and local authorities, such as the European authority, prohibit the use of surveillance video footage. Therefore, such solutions affect legal compliance with the health and safety regulations, even affect the efficiency of the current security system on real-time asset monitoring.
An alternative technological solution entails a smart anonymization surveillance system that anonymizes real-time data and provides useful insights from the video data for airport management. The smart anonymization surveillance system is scalable across multiple platforms, provides useful insights from the video data, is cost-effective and efficient, and improves service quality across airports globally. The development and implementation of such solutions foster compliance with the health and safety regulations while decreasing costs and increasing the quality of service across airports around the world.
System Requirements
The project involved conceptualizing a smart technological solution for BrainCreators and Bosch Energy & Building Solutions. BrainCreators is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) software company that builds and delivers digital inspectors that perform visual inspections faster and more consistently, removing costly bottlenecks from core processes by automating repetitive tasks. Furthermore, BrainCreators has a BrainMatter platform, which is used to train and employ digital inspectors as turnkey cloud or on-edge solutions. BrainCreators is also one of the strategic ecosystem partners of Advantech.
In addition, as part of the renowned Bosch company, Bosch Energy & Building Solutions provide safety and security solutions with a strong focus on Control Rooms. Bosch Energy & Building Solutions also provide connected and integrated solutions to make buildings more secure, comfortable, and efficient.
In light of the COVID-19 pandemic and its adverse effect on air transportation globally, BrainCreators and Bosch Energy & Building Solutions sought new methods for reforming automation through the use of current video surveillance camera systems in airports to automate digital visual inspections for real-time asset monitoring, automated crowd monitoring and social distancing around airports. Some of the specific requirements include the following:
- State-of-the-art hardware for advanced AI software
- Cost-effectiveness
- Improved service quality
- Compliance with European regulations
- Capacity to provide integration for large facilities and airports
System Description
The smart solution entails Advantech’s MIC-770 Compact Fanless System with 8th Gen Intel® Core™ I CPU. The data was initially processed at BrainCreators’ data center, which is subsequently deployed on the Advantech MIC-770, which has an NVIDIA Tesla T4 Inference card. It is also worth highlighting that the use of multiple NVIDIA Tesla T4 Inference cards ensures scalability across multiple platforms. By doing this, the data captured by the Video Management System (VMS) could be analyzed, processed, and anonymized in real-time ensuring airport management staff could use the anonymized footage for asset and operational management.
Additional benefits of this smart anonymization surveillance system include the possibility to create a digital twin further adding versatility for a wide range of applications. These applications include asset monitoring, accurate tracking, people counter, mask detection to ensure safety, luggage cart finder, and unattended luggage detection for security reasons. These factors will also save staff costs, area scanning costs for fixed assets (e.g., light fixtures, trashcans, sprinkler installations) and will enable the effective use of third parties (e.g., cleaning companies).
System Diagram
Why Advantech
With millions of passengers using airports every day alongside the COVID-19 pandemic, the health and safety of passengers have become essential and a top priority across airports around the world. This has led to the development of smart technological solutions to improve the safety of passengers and airport workers as well as create significant cost-reduction for the airport management.
As a result, Advantech’s mature IPC and Edge AI technology effectively provided BrainCreators, and Bosch Energy & Building Solutions the foundation to conceptualize a solution that comprised a smart video surveillance system with the capability to anonymize real-time data for operational airport management. This solution utilizes existing surveillance camera systems to automate digital visual inspections, such as real-time asset monitoring, automated crowd monitoring, and social distancing, thereby compliant with current General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by the EU Government. More specifically, the smart anonymization surveillance system entails using trained data at BrainCreators’ data center, deployed on Advantech MIC-770. Afterward, data is captured by the VMS, which is analyzed, processed, and anonymized in real-time for asset and operational management.
Furthermore, deeply rooted in Advantech’s advanced technology, the smart anonymization surveillance system is scalable across multiple platforms, provides useful insights from the video data, is cost-effective and efficient, and improves service quality across airports globally.