“You Can’t Manage What You Can’t Measure”- Peter Drucker

Retail Video Analytics

Analyzing captured video material by using refined algorithms has become a useful tool for retail managers in order to measure what is influencing the client experience in their stores.

By doing so, physical retail locations may well be examined and enhanced in terms of people, merchandise and engagement.

Comprehensive information can be collected about specific customer and or employee experiences and how they are induced. This includes the simple counting of entrance and exit data, queuing behavior and respective waiting times or the effectiveness of the customer flow within the store.

Also Video Analytics helps to identify potential stock-outs and on shelf availability. As a result this gives the retailer the possibility to anticipate and replace products on the shelves, which are close to run out soon. This becomes even more important when the retailer is legally obliged to promotional compliance, having to ensure maximum exposure of a certain product to the consumer.

In addition to that, retailers are now able to derive valuable engagement insights between their customers and personnel. Which parts of the shop are most frequented? Is the personnel covering all the store area?

What are the main benefits for retailers?

In order to make managerial decisions, executives need accurate and reliable information. Retail Video Analytics is providing the means to drive business decisions that rely on hard facts.  Without the use of Video Analytics, retailers would have to watch all the recorded footage to spot insightful information. They maybe would have to hire designated employees to be able to sight all the material. Now special dashboards are able to present live metrics form the stores, making additional employees obsolete. That’s why Video Analytics can hence be the basis for a proactive approach towards and improved customer experience and loss prevention.

References:

http://www.3vr.com/blog/how-video-analytics-can-transform-your-retail-business

http://www.assosia.com/retail-auditing/promotional-compliance.aspx

http://www.genetec.com/partners/technology-partner-program/existing-partners/video-analytics-partners

Cameras CAN read EMOTIONS…

or at least they will be able to soon enough. This is what researchers from NYU are trying to accomplish and, by the looks of it, they might be able to pull it off. Well to be fair, it will not be the camera itself that will be capable of such a feat; it is software that will be installed within the camera and that has been under development under the watchful eye of sponsors such as the Pentagon.

Now you might ask, “What is the point of that?” Well, the US Military thinks that developing software that can read emotions will play a key role in avoiding tragedies like the Boston Marathon Bombing. In fact, although today’s video analytics software can determine if a person is concealing a weapon or identify suspicious behavioral patterns, it is only able to do so after the fact.

However, imagine if a camera could detect suspicious behavior live and send out the appropriate alert or warning. This is what the team of researchers is currently working now and, according to them, they can already identify positive emotions and next on their list are negative/aggressive emotions. This has been useful mainly for marketing purposes, in order to detect the type of responses crowds come-up with when exposed to different stimuli.

Nonetheless, although the theory seems to be relatively straightforward, such software will have to be ‘trained’. What is meant by that is that it will have to be loaded with data form people paid to analyze and tag video footage based on what they are shown on their screens. Researchers then take this data and upload it into a computer neural network that analyzes the relationship between the data, thus allowing the software to do so on its own.

Lets hope these guys can pull it off because, from what I have read, it seems that such technology will really be able to prevent or at least mitigate the impact of such events in the future.

References:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2013/04/18/httpblogs-scientificamerican-comobservationswp-adminpost-new-phppost_typepost/

Analyzing Tiki Taka

Video Analysis in sports

Years ago, when facing an important match, the coach had to transfer all the ideas that he had in mind to his players. He had to do so only through his words and the use of a blackboard.

Nowadays, new technologies have even broken into the world of sports, changing the daily work of coaches, scouters and players around the world.  

Video motion analysis is part of video analysis, the technique often used for sport video analysis. With the development of science and technology, video motion analysis is able to record objects and analyze their movements scientifically.

Basically the Video Motion Analysis consists of a digital camera and a software with flame-by-flame playback function. First the digital camera films the object or scene to be considered and the very sophisticated software calculates all the elements which affect the movement such as speed, gravity, time value, and position. These elements are then put into the data so that the user can the results while at the same time analyzing the object’s motion.

Video analytics has different usages related to sports. The main one is the video sessions used for the coaches as a medium to transfer their knowledge. By studying their rivals, coaches can build up something like a SWOT Analysis to face the match with a higher guarantee of success.

Also this study can be applied to enhance our own efficiency by correcting some mistakes in the defensive line or adjusting some strategies about the pressure of the strikers and midfielders.

Other ways to take advantage of these services is by implementing this analysis onto the individual skills. Using as a reference some top players like Messi or Ronaldo, we can study their movements and skills and transfer this knowledge to our own players.

Most of the top teams around the world have their own scouting department where they study different markets to create a database. Then, when a coach asks for a particular profile he can find different options based on the previous work of the scouters.

With the passage of time, it seems that video analysis will continue gaining importance in the world of sports. Even in sports as traditional and old as football, it is expected that technology will start being used in order to increase the accuracy of the decisions and to guarantee higher levels of fairness in matches.

Video Analytics, what's that?

Video Analytics is a technology that is used to analyze video for specific data, behavior, objects or attitude. It has a wide range of applications including safety and security. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.   

The scope of Video Analytics.  

Automatically retrieving information from videos through content analytics is a area of technology which had brought breakthroughs in the fields of security, sports, behavioral studies and everyday life. This blog intends to explore, discuss and explain this trend which is gradually replacing the human eye. So bear with us, further updates are on their way!

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