Integrated intelligent server based system and method/systems adapted to facilitate fail-safe integration and/or optimized utilization of various sensory inputs

• US 9,704,393 B2
• Filed: 01/11/2012
• Issued: 07/11/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 01/11/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Videonetics Technology Private Limited
• Original Assignee: Videonetics Technology Private Limited
• Inventors: Acharya, Tinku, Dalal, Tutai Kumar, Maity, Soumyadip, Bhattacharyya, Dipak, Das, Sawan, Dhar, Soumyadeep, Bose, Tuhin
• Primary Examiner(s): Mejia, Anthony
• Application Number:
  US13/347,796
• Publication Number:
  US 20120179742A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,008 Days
• Field of Search: 709201-201, 709223, 709219, 709231, 709232, 709202, 714 471- 473, 370254, 725 90- 98, 725115, 725105, 725116, 725118
• CPC Class Codes: G08B 13/19656 Network used to communicate with a camera, e.g. WAN, LAN, Internet
• CPC Class Codes: G08G 1/0175 by photographing vehicles, e.g. when violating traffic rules
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/2187 Live feed
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/23116 involving data replication, e.g. over plural servers synchronization of replicated data G06F11/1658; error detection or correction by means of data replication G06F11/2053; replication in distributed file systems G06F16/10; replication in distributed file systems G06F16/27; replication or mirroring of data in data networks H04L67/1095
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 21/23418 involving operations for analysing video streams, e.g. detecting features or characteristics television picture signal circuitry for scene change detection H04N5/147; filtering for image enhancement G06T5/00; methods or arrangements for recognising scenes G06V20/00; arrangements characterised by components specially adapted for monitoring, identification or recognition of video in broadcast systems H04H60/59
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 5/77 between a recording apparatus and a television camera
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 7/18 Closed-circuit television [CCTV] systems, i.e. systems in which the video signal is not broadcast

Abstract

Integrated intelligent system adapted for any operating system and/or multi-OS computing environment seamlessly having sensory input/data acquisition cum recording server group and/or analytics server group enabling fail-safe integration and/or optimized utilization of various sensory inputs for various utility applications. Also disclosed as added advancements include intelligent method/system for cost-effective and efficient band adaptive transferring/recording sensory data from single or multiple data sources to network accessible storage devices, fail safe and self sufficient server group based method for sensory input recording and live streaming in a multi-server environment, intelligent and unified method of color coherent object analysis, face detection in video images and the like, resource allocation for analytical processing involving multi channel environment, multi channel join-split mechanism adapted for low and/or variable bandwidth network link, enhanced multi-color and/or mono-color object tracking and also an intelligent automated traffic enforcement system.

Claims

1. An integrated intelligent server based system for transferring sensory data received from channels to network accessible central storage system comprising

a seamless and intelligent interconnection of at least one recording server based autonomous system receiving said sensory data from said channels for transferring to said network accessible central storage system including a cooperative communication channel between all of said recording server based autonomous system enabling desired scalability of number of the recording server based autonomous systems including when spread across wide geographical regions over an ip network and also allocating the sensory data from the channels to said recording servers based autonomous systems through said cooperative communication channel, said cooperative communication channel between said recording server based autonomous systems enabling assessing respective recording server capacity, configuration of each of the recording servers of said recording server based autonomous systems to operate them as a group of recording servers and to enable fail-safe support when any of the recording servers in the group fail to operate, remaining operative recording servers in the group distribute and take over the sensory data load of said recording servers in the group which fail to operate to thus render the system fail safe and self-sufficient;

each of said recording server in the group comprises local storage for storing the sensory data in segmented clips of various size and monitor available network bandwidth and sensory data inflow rate for each of the channels into the recording server; and

an intelligent interface communication channel operatively linked to said cooperative communication channel between all of said recording server based autonomous system for carrying said sensory data of each said recording server to said network accessible central storage system involving intelligent network bandwidth sharing amongst said channels for transferring said sensory data received from the channels to the network accessible central storage system based on real time available network bandwidth as well as each of said sensory data inflow rate, local storage space of the respective recording servers wherein each of said recording server is self enabled for adjusting of rate of uploading of said segmented clips received by it to said network accessible central storage system from an individual channel based on the available network bandwidth and the sensory data inflow rate for said individual channel to its connected recording server and requirement of local storage space of said recording server connected to said individual channel for transferring the sensory data received from said individual channels to the network accessible central storage system via the local storage of said recording server in a fail-safe bandwidth optimized manner utilizing optimal bandwidth and share the available network bandwidth amongst the channels and their respective recording servers for uploading the sensory data to the network accessible central storage system in fail safe manner.

2. The integrated intelligent server based system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the channels correspond to cameras, other video sources and sensory data sources generating streaming data.

3. The integrated intelligent server based system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said intelligent interface communication channel is operatively connected to anyone or more (a) user management and client access controller (b) event controller and handler and (c) event and/or selected segments of sensory data distributor.

4. The integrated intelligent server based system as claimed in claim 1, comprising operative client modules comprise selectively standalone surveillance client, internet browser, web client, any hand held devices including mobile device client, and remote event and notification receiver enabling user to receive, view, analyze, search sensory inputs.

5. The integrated intelligent server based system as claimed in claim 1 wherein said recording servers provide for (i) collecting input sensory data from the channels, archiving, tagging, and indexing to seamlessly map in a database or data warehousing system involving any one or more of optimal usage of computing, communication and storage resources, facilitate efficient search, transcoding, retransmission, authentication of data, rendering and viewing of archived data at any point of time and (ii) uploading the input sensory data real time or on demand including streaming video and other sensory content in multiple formats to multiple devices by adjusting the rate of uploading for live viewing in different matrix layout, relaying of the content, local archiving, rendering of the sensory data in multiple forms and formats, by a fail-safe mechanism without affecting speed and performance of on-going operations and services.

6. The integrated intelligent server based system as claimed in claim 1, wherein all the recording servers in the autonomous system auto register themselves by requesting and thereby getting a unique identification number (ID) from the intelligent interface while configuration data related to the recording servers comprising identification of the channels including the video sources it caters to and the network accessible central storage system it uses are stored in a database against said identification number.

7. The integrated intelligent server based system as claimed in claim 1 wherein said intelligent interface is provided for anyone or more of (i) filtering and need based transmission of the sensory data, (ii) directing distribution of alerts (iii) providing a common gateway for heterogeneous entities.

8. The integrated intelligent server based system as claimed in claim 1 comprising central server to serve as a gateway to plurality of said autonomous system and integrate the system into a single unified system.

9. The integrated intelligent server based system as claimed in claim 4 wherein the network accessible central storage system comprising a cluster of one or more network accessible storage devices.

10. The integrated intelligent server based system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the segmented clips of the sensory data includes small granular clips or segments of programmable and variable length sizes and said clips stored in the said local storages of the recording servers, the clip metadata being stored in a local database.

11. The integrated intelligent server based system as claimed in claim 1 wherein said intelligent interface (i) auto registers itself to the system, (ii) accepts request from surveillance clients and relays the same to corresponding recording server and analytic server, (iii) receives configuration data from the surveillance clients and feeds to the intended components of the system, (iv) receives event information from analytic server on-line and transmits to various recipients including remote event receiver, fetches outstanding event clips, if any, (v) periodically receives heartbeat signals alongwith status information from all active devices and relays that to other devices in same or other networks, (vi) streams live video, recorded video or event alerts at appropriate time, (vii) joins multiple channel sensory inputs into a single combined stream to adapt to variable and low bandwidth network, (viii) enables search based on various criteria including data, time, event types, channels, signal features, and other system input and (ix) enables user to perform an user-interactive smart search to filter out desired segment of the sensory input from the database.

12. The integrated intelligent server based system as claimed in claim 1 wherein said recording server group comprise plurality of sensory data recording server to:

record inputs from single/multiple sensory data sources in at least one local storage space database with uniform resource locator of files stored;

transfer the thus stored files from said local storage to a network based central storage for accessing the files for end use/applications;

said transfer of sensory data from the sensory data source to the central storage via said local storage being carried out taking into consideration data download speed (inflow rate) from the sensory data source to the recording server alongwith the availability of network bandwidth at any given point of time for ensuring efficient network bandwidth sharing amongst multiple sensory data sources to said central storage in the network.

13. The integrated intelligent server based system as claimed in claim 12 wherein each of said sensory data recording server monitors available total network bandwidth and per sensory data source inflow rate and based thereon decide rate of per sensory data source the sensory data transfer from the local storage to said central storage.

14. The integrated intelligent server based system as claimed in claim 1 wherein said sensory data from the channels are recorded in the form of the variable length clips wherein the clip duration is set by the user or set by the recording server itself.

15. The integrated intelligent server based system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said recording server determine rate of uploading of the segmented clips of the sensory data received from the channels to the network accessible central storage system by calculating average of the rate for each channel separately in periodic interval involving calculating the rate of clip upload (U_i) for a particular channel by

(a) estimating the sensory data inflow rate (D_i) of said particular channel to the recording server;

(b) identifying the available network bandwidth (B) at that instant from the system;

(c) calculating the rate of clip upload for the particular channel, based on;

U_i=[B×

k÷

Σ

D_i]×

D_i,

where 0<

k<

1, depending on how much of the remaining bandwidth is to be allocated for uploading task.

16. The integrated intelligent server based system as claimed in claim 1 wherein the respective capacity of the recording servers in the recording server group is based on the memory, network bandwidth and current processor utilization within the recording server.

17. The integrated intelligent server based system as claimed in claim 16 wherein the recording server group allocates any one of the operative recording servers in said recording server group as group master server and continuously monitors the recording servers in the group and their respective capacities and decides on the allocation and releases of the channels from any recording servers within the recording server group.

18. The integrated intelligent server based system as claimed in claim 17 the said group master server releases or adds a sensory input source based on required (a) addition of an input source, (b) deletion of an existing input source, (c) addition of a new recording server to the system or when a failed server again re-operates and (d) when a running server stops functioning.

19. An integrated intelligent server based system as claimed in claim 1 comprising multi channel join-split mechanism for low and/or variable bandwidth network link comprising:

a sender unit to receive multi channel inputs from site to join and compress into a single channel and a receiver unit at client site to receive the inputs and extract the individual channels for the purposes of end use

said sender unit to combine while transmitting multi channel inputs into a single channel, frame by frame, and controlling the transmission bit rate to avoid jittery outputs and/or any interference between individual channels and/or starvation for any single channel.