Airport security keeps eye on left luggage

Date: 14/11/2005
Source: ABC Science
Author: -

A computer surveillance system that spots an abandoned suitcase at a crowded airport and sees what happened to the person who left it there is being developed.

Its developers hope the system will one-day allow security staff to tell the difference between a suspicious abandoned suitcase whose owner has left the building and a suitcase whose owner is queuing for coffee two metres away.

Computer vision expert, Associate Professor Massimo Piccardi of the University of Technology, Sydney and colleagues, were last week awarded an Australian Research Council grant to work with surveillance company iOmniscient, to improve the company's surveillance technology.

The technology uses software with security cameras that can identify when a strange stationary object, like a suitcase, appears in an otherwise familiar scene.

The system, based on non-motion detection technology, prompts security staff to check if the abandoned object is suspicious or not.

This technology is currently used to monitor airports and other buildings around the world, including 12 sites in Australia, where it is understood to be also used on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

But, says Piccardi, the current version of the technology is not very good at distinguishing between stationary objects that are really suspicious and those that aren't.

And this means security guards are regularly alerted unnecessarily.

Tracking people and objects
Piccardi and team plan to develop tracking technology to allow the surveillance system to determine whether people move away from the area, or the building, after leaving the object.

"We [will] just track them while they are walking and track the relationship with these objects that they carry," he says. "And we will raise an alarm only if the object is being left and the original carrier has left the area nearby."

He says the aim is "ambitious" because tracking people using surveillance cameras has been a long-standing challenge and currently only works when the area under surveillance is not crowded.

When it's crowded, the fact that people walk behind other people makes it difficult for cameras to track them, says Piccardi.

But he says his team has developed expertise in matching people who only appear on camera in bursts as they disappear and re-emerge from behind others.

Ruling out the courtesy trolleys Piccardi also plans to catalogue certain objects that are likely to be safe, like abandoned courtesy wheelchairs and trolleys at airports.

"But if someone is leaving a suitcase on a wheelchair then that suitcase can be as dangerous as a suitcase left on the floor," he says.

He says the system would use geometry, colours and contrast to confirm whether the wheelchair was indeed empty and if there was any doubt, security would be alerted.

The amount of time that elapses before an abandoned object alerts security staff can be set by the users, says Dr Rustom Kanga, chief executive officer of iOmniscient.

For example while an object abandoned for five minutes might be fine for luggage in an airport, the system might trigger an alert after 30 seconds if a car is abandoned outside an embassy, he says.

Asked about the issue of civil liberties, Piccardi says he hopes that such technologies will be used for society not against society.

"My personal commitment as a citizen is trying to keep the community united as much as possible," he says.

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