TOKYO, Mar 27, 2017 – (JCN
Newswire) – Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501) today announced the development of a
detection and tracking technology using artificial intelligence (AI) which can
distinguish an individual in real-time using features from over 100 categories
of external characteristics such as sex, color of clothing or carried items,
and immediately detect and track the person sought after individual. Using this
technology, it will be possible to detect a suspicious individual or a lost
child using information from eye-witness accounts to detect a person fitting
that description from public security cameras set up in large facilities or
city areas. Further, by analyzing the entire image of the person detected, it
will be possible to follow the person from camera images where only the
rear-view is captured and the face cannot be seen, or the person is captured
from a distance. Hitachi will apply this technology to wide-area security and
surveillance systems(1) such as those in public areas, contribute to public
safety and security.

Wide-area people-tracking system using this technology

To ensure safety, measures such as surveillance using
security cameras and patrol by security staff are being implemented in public
areas such as city areas and large facilities such as airports and stations. In
order to prevent emergencies, however, it is necessary to be able to
immediately close-in on images of a suspicious person or a lost child based on
eye-witness accounts from persons on the scene, and locate in real-time the
whereabouts of the person sought after from the wide-area surveillance camera
network. As it is difficult to screen all of the images with a limited number
of staff, technology to detect and track people has been developed using facial
images procured at some entry point or features such as color of clothing,
however it was difficult to detect and track a person if there was limited
eye-witness account, other people wearing similar color clothing, or if the
surveillance camera was unable to capture a clear facial image due to angle or
lighting.

To overcome this challenge, Hitachi applied AI to distinguish
an individual in real-time using multiple features such as sex, age group and
clothing, and furthermore, track that individual in real time from the images
from wide-area surveillance cameras. Features of the technology developed are
as below:

1. High-speed person detection technology that categorizes
and searches using characteristics of external appearance and movement

AI that can perform real-time simultaneous detection to
identify from camera images, more than 100 characteristics related to 12 types
of appearance such as sex, age, hair style, color and form of clothing, and
carried items, and movement characteristics from 10 categories such as walking,
running, and bending. Conventionally, each item needed to be calculated separately
to distinguish the characteristics. This time, a method to simultaneous
calculate multiple items has been adopted, reducing calculation time to
1/40th(2). As a result, by providing specific conditions based on
characteristics categorized in real-time by AI, high-speed detection of an
individual is now possible.

2. High speed person tracking technology that analyzes in
detail the entire image of the body and extracts images of the same person

AI that recognizes an individual as the same person by analyzing
and converting the image of the entire body into a numerical description so
that the same person will be recognized regardless of a change in body angle or
lighting. By recording the result of the AI analysis in a database(3) with
high-speed vector processing developed by Hitachi, an image of the same person
can be extracted from among several ten thousands of recorded images in less
than 1 second. Further, over a three-fold improvement(2) in accuracy of
obtaining an image of the same person, was found when the AI developed was
compared with that of facial analysis only.

Real-time people detection and tracking was made possible by
combining the technologies developed. From now, Hitachi will apply this
technology to wide-area security and surveillance systems such as those in
public areas, contribute to public safety and security.

(1) In installing such technology, sufficient discussion will
be held with the customer to ensure measures that are introduced to protect
personal information and privacy.
(2) Comparison with conventional Hitachi technology.
(3) “EnraEnra” database, a high-speed similar image
search technology developed by Hitachi.