Drone System Gets 'Brains' from Czech Scientists to Detect Abnormal Behavior

 

Law enforcement organisations all across the world are using technology to better equip themselves to prevent crimes and respond faster. With limited manpower, the majority of them are using drones to monitor huge groups of people or a large region of interest. Though extremely valuable, one component of this technology is limited: the ability to determine what is normal and what is not. They can only send the video to their handler, who will determine what to do with it. As a result, a group of Czech researchers decided to provide these robots with the ability to detect suspicious behaviour. They claim to have created a surveillance system that analyses drone footage in a human-like manner.

This innovative system, which was developed as part of a cooperative research effort between the Brno University of Technology and the Czech Republic's Police, employs neural networks to decode data. It can be used for traffic management as well as surveillance and crowd control, according to the experts.

David Baout, a recent graduate of the university's Information Technology faculty, explained how his and his colleagues' system works. The drone footage is broken into smaller "cells," he told Radio Prague International. After that, the system analyses and creates a general picture of what's going on. It then creates a model of expected behaviour in the given environment, compares any anomalies, and reports them to the observer.

The main benefit of this system is that it learns and executes the programme in real time, eliminating the risk of losing critical time when preparing a police response.