Usage Of Aerial Vision By Public Sector Enterprises

Back to the Future Part-2, a science fiction movie released in 1989, depicted drones being used to record news. More recently, in 2019, Spider-Man: Far from Home shows the usage of drones to create holographic cataclysmic threats that Spider-Man thwarts to save the day. Although the exaggerated depiction of the tech-led future that shows the high-tech usage of drones seems unreal in the films, the reality is that drones have come a long way in how they are used.

4. Disaster Management

• The national disaster management authority deployed drones during the rescue operation in the flood-hit Uttarakhand. These drones were also used to assess the damage caused by the flood.
• The National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) in Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, used drones to trace 24 Engineering students swept away in the Beas river. The NDRF has also deployed drones to survey landslides site at Malin in Ambegaon.

5. Transport

• National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) used drones in the Salem-Chennai green corridor to cross-check the accuracy of the land required for the project. The drones were used to estimate the number of trees (coconut, mango, and palm) that the expressway project would affect.
• The Maharashtrian Government, as a pilot project, has used aerial vision to check rush hour traffic on a 95 km stretch between Lonavala exit and Khalapur toll plaza and on the Mumbai Pune highway.

The Indian Government has already implemented aerial vision technologies in various sectors. The pilot projects deployed by the governments are now being expanded to full-fledged programs to expand the reach of aerial vision. However, there are certain challenges facing the development and deployment of UAVs- regulations, target applications, man-machine interface design issues, navigation, safety/reliability, collision prevention, take-off/landing techniques, etc. HSC can help solve the above challenges by working with leading ISVs and OEMs. HSC’s Drone Middleware and Ecosystem Engineering can help integrate their products with drone platforms.

Video and image analytic software monitor and analyze video streams and images to find patterns and anomalies. The market for such software is increasing rapidly, as corroborated by a report by 6wreseach, which states that the video surveillance market in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 17.8% during 2021-27. The report also showed that the Government and Transportation sector is the biggest amongst the various vertical markets. This is because the significant use-case of video and image analytics is in surveillance. According to the report, the positive outlook of the Indian Government and the various initiatives such as Smart Cities Mission, UDAN scheme, Atal Mission for Rejuvenation, and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) has led to this rise. The rise in demand is also due to purchase orders for surveillance devices by various state governments. Not long ago, Forbes India reported that Delhi had surpassed metropolitans like New York, London, and Shanghai in being the most surveilled city per square mile. This means Delhi has more than 1826 surveillance cameras per square mile, followed by London (1138) and Chennai (609).

Video and Image analytics is also used in traffic management for Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR), issuance of over-speed challan, red light or any other traffic violation. Airports are planning to use image analytics to allow passengers to unpack their bags virtually. The scanners embedded with image analytics will provide better object detection and significantly reduce the number of bags that will need to be checked manually. Many insurance companies use image analytics to assess damaged vehicles for easy resolution of claims.

Few real-world uses of Video and Image analytics by Indian Public Sectors-

• As per the Times of India, Gujarat Police has decided to set up their video analytics program to train police personnel. This will increase the speed of crime detection and prevention. Earlier, the CCTV videos were sent to 3rd party experts for video and image analysis.
• Surakshavyuh, a solution for CCTV video analytics, is installed in Naval Docks of Vishakapatnam. It was developed with the help of the National Center of Excellence in Technology at IIT-Bombay and is capable of real-time intrusion detection, perimeter monitoring, face recognition, and crowd counting.
• Indian Railways has deployed a network of more than 500 CCTV cameras embedded with face recognition technology across 30 railways stations.

The Indian Government and the various state governments are spending heavily on surveillance and monitoring equipment. The spending is only expected to rise as incidents of thefts, women safety and terrorism rise year after year. Moreover, rapid urbanization is also a factor to deploy surveillance cameras around the cities. Software such as HSC’s Core Image and Video Analytics (CIVA)act as the main component to these surveillance devices. CIVA is a generalized classification (what) and segmentation (where) engine that works on both videos and images. It is coupled with HSC’s big data framework accelerator to provide an easy-to-use system.