Surveylens®
Enterprise-Wide
Video Surveillance Technology

Surveylens addresses the complex problems associated with enterprise-wide digital camera surveillance systems:

• Control and coordination of digital cameras that may be widely deployed

• Analyzing data from multiple cameras

• Making data available in such a way that it can be efficiently transmitted over a network and can be easily displayed to a potentially large number of users

• Displaying and controlling image data through existing client software, such as a browser

These problems are addressed by providing a flexible and scalable surveillance system and method. Surveylens works effectively in small installations with just a few cameras and only one viewer, and enterprise-wide installations using thousands of cameras, widely dispersed, allowing for selectable viewing by many viewers.

Surveylens is rules-based and 100% user-definable. The user determines what defines an incident, and also determines what alert actions will be taken.

Surveylens allows various data and image processing tasks to be easily incorporated into specific systems depending on application.

In security surveillance systems where authentication of a recorded digital image is important, cameras and Frame Grabbers can employ digital signature key technology or other technology to verify that an image was not altered after it was initially captured.

Surveylens consists of the following functional elements:

Multiple Frame Grabbers (FGs) that include one or more cameras, digital image capture circuitry, and low-level logic routines. A Frame Grabber is something that captures a frame of data. For video surveillance purposes, a Frame Grabber is a camera. However, the FG could be grabbing alarm, fire, and safety information, audio... virtually anything!

One or more Camera Coordinators for receiving full frames, differential frames, and other data from FGs, storing this data, and for adding a higher level of image processing. The Camera Coordinator uses a rules-based engine to coordinate the cameras and deliver appropriate information to viewers. Coordinators generally include logic for one or more of the following: Detecting and storing an incident from one or more FGs, and resolving incidents from multiple FGs into an incident sequence Image recognition Logging and cataloging incidents according to a rules-based engine Generating alarms to security personnel, a server, etc. A coordinator may also include an interface for sending control signals to the FG to control basic FG functions, such as frequency of capture, focus, contrast, and, for moveable FGs, positioning.

An Image Server for providing an interface to one or more client viewers. An Image Server handles image presentation and may include logic allowing a client to pan and zoom the view of an image. An Image Server also includes logic to provide an intelligent interface to a client viewer. This includes launching windows in the client viewer when incidents are detected and updating open windows with differential frames and full frames. The Image Server communicates with the viewers -- sending information such as images to the viewers and receiving viewer requests such as: viewing a particular set of cameras or camera, or determining when the camera last detected movement. A server may also include an interface for receiving commands back from a client and forwarding those commands to a coordinator when appropriate. A server can also provide a high-capacity connection to the Internet, allowing potentially thousands of viewers to view the same image.

The Administrator Console allows system administrators to control the cameras and viewers. For example: aborting a camera, disabling a viewer, or sending an alert to a given viewer.

One or more Viewers for displaying images delivered by the server. In some applications, clients may also receive commands from a user and forward results of those commands back to a server. Viewers may be familiar, off-the-shelf, browser applications, such as Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer, or clients may be proprietary applications. If desired, both off-the-shelf and proprietary clients can simultaneously access image data. Thousands of Viewers can view the same images. Viewing can be restricted by various security measures. Multiple images can be viewed at once.