SECURITY DEVICE AND SYSTEM

• US 20080317286A1
• Filed: 05/27/2008
• Published: 12/25/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 06/20/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Sony United Kingdom Limited (Sony Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Sony United Kingdom Limited (Sony Group Corp.)
• Inventors: David, Morgan William Amos, Thorpe, Jonathan Richard
• Granted Patent: US 8,577,082 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/103
• CPC Class Codes: G08B 13/19615 wherein said pattern is defined by the user

Abstract

A security device and system is disclosed. This security device is particularly useful in a security system where there are many security cameras to be monitored. This device automatically highlights to a user a camera feed in which an incident is occurring. This assists a user in identifying incidents and to make an appropriate decision regarding whether or not to intervene. This highlighting is performed by a trigger signal generated in accordance with a comparison between a sequence of representations of sensory data and other corresponding sequences of representations of sensory data.

Claims

1. A security device comprising a comparing unit operable to compare a sequence of representations of sensory data captured from a location under surveillance with other corresponding sequences of representations of sensory data;

a generating unit, operable in response to the comparison, to generate a trigger signal;

a representation generating unit operable to generate a feature vector representation of the sensory data, and an anomaly indicating unit operable to generate an anomaly value, indicating the difference between each feature vector in the sequence and each feature vector in the corresponding sequence, in accordance with the Euclidian distance between the said feature vectors and wherein the generating unit is operable to generate the trigger signal in accordance with the anomaly value.

2. A security device according to claim 1, wherein the comparing unit is operable to compare the sequence of representations with other corresponding sequences of representations captured over a predetermined time interval.

3. A security device according to claim 1, wherein the sensory data is generated from at least one of image data, audio data and/or sensor input data captured from the location under surveillance.

4. A security device according to claim 1, wherein the sensory data is ground truth metadata.

5. A security device according to claim 1, comprising a feature vector reduction unit operable to reduce the dimensionality of the generated feature vector using principle component analysis.

6. A security device according to claim 5, comprising a unit operable to generate a self organising map using the generated feature vector representations of the sensory data.

7. A security device according to claim 1, wherein the corresponding sequence of representations of the sensory data is updated in response to a user input.

8. A security device according to claim 7, wherein the corresponding sequence of representations is provided by business logic.

9. A security device according to claim 8, wherein the business logic is a Hidden Markov Model.

10. A security system couplable, over a network, to a security device according to claim 7, the security system comprising a processing unit operative to receive the representation of the sensory data and other data from at least one of image data, audio data and/or sensor input data associated with said representation of the sensory data, and to generate, in accordance with the received representation of the sensory data and the received other data, said predetermined sequence of representations, and a transmission unit operative to transmit, to the security device, the generated predetermined sequence.

11. A security system comprising a control unit connected to at least one security camera, a monitor, an archive operable to store said representations of the captured material in association with at least one of corresponding image data, audio data and/or sensor input data and a device according to claim 1.

12. A security system according to claim 11, wherein the control unit is operable to display, on the monitor, output feeds from the or each of said security cameras, wherein the prominence of the displayed output feed or feeds is dependent upon the trigger signal.

13. A security camera comprising an image capture means and a security device according to claim 1.

14. A method of operating the system of claim 10, wherein said predetermined sequence is generated in exchange for money or monies worth.

15. A method according to claim 14, wherein said money or monies worth is paid periodically.

16. A security monitoring method comprising comparing a sequence of representations of sensory data captured from a location under surveillance with other corresponding sequences of representations of sensory data, and in response to the comparison, generating a trigger signal;

generating a feature vector representation of the sensory data and generating an anomaly value, indicating the difference between each feature vector in the sequence and each feature vector in the corresponding sequence, in accordance with the Euclidian distance between the said feature vectors and generating the trigger signal in accordance with the anomaly value.

17. A security monitoring method according to claim 16, wherein the corresponding sequences are captured over a predetermined time interval

18. A method according to claim 16, wherein the sensory data is generated from at least one of image data, audio data and/or sensor input data captured from the location under surveillance.

19. A method according to claim 16, wherein the sensory data is ground truth metadata.

20. A method according to claim 16, comprising reducing the dimensionality of the generated feature vector using principle component analysis.

21. A method according to claim 19, comprising generating a self organising map using the generated feature vector representations of the sensory data.

22. A method according to claim 21, wherein the corresponding sequence of comparisons of the sensory data is updated in response to a user input.

23. A method according to claim 22, wherein the corresponding sequence of representations is provided by business logic.

24. A security device according to claim 23, wherein the business logic is a Hidden Markov Model.

25. A computer program comprising computer readable instructions, which when loaded onto a computer, configure the computer to perform the method according to claim 16.

26. A storage medium configured to store the computer program according to claim 25 therein or thereon.

27. Machine interpretable security data representing a sequence of representations of sensory data captured from a location under surveillance, the data being arranged to generate a trigger signal in response to the comparison of the security data with other corresponding sequences of representations of sensory data.