Whilst technological breakthroughs and the adoption of digital technologies have brought a new era of progress, it can sometimes be hard for the untrained eye to recognise cutting-edge innovations in every-day life. However, smart cities are a key field where new technologies, such as smart video, directly and visibly, raise living standards.
Smart cities use information and communication technologies to improve operational efficiency, share information with the public, and provide a better quality of local authority services. For example, advancements in IoT technologies have enabled connected public transportation systems, which leverage real-time monitoring capabilities and track the locations and routes of public vehicles. Not only does this speed up service times and reduce traffic congestion, it cuts waiting times for passengers and keeps them informed.
There’s also an important security element to smart cities as smart video or cameras utilise AI algorithms and deep learning (DL) to analyse visual data in real time, and can dispatch orders from a hub to AI-powered devices faster than a human can process them. Going further than just providing data, smart technologies can actually enable the devices to deploy intelligent insights. For example, cameras and AI-analysed traffic patterns can adjust traffic lights accordingly to improve vehicle flow, reduce congestion and pollution, and increase pedestrian safety.
Smart video is also being deployed in connected cities to deliver critical assistance to help reduce crime. Business owners, for example, need security cameras to help protect their property, reduce shoplifting and monitor employee or customer incidents. On a larger scale, real-time video analysis can identify and differentiate between objects, like distinguishing humans from animals. It can also alert the relevant people or systems of activity in a prohibited location or place.
The process behind smart video
Smart cameras need to learn to recognise objects and actions and classify the identified actions into categories such as anomalous or normal. This is where AI and DL are needed for training and learning; DL needs to analyse a tremendous amount of data to be highly accurate. The development of higher video resolution such as 4K is key here, enabling CCTV cameras to capture more data in high quality and from various angles, making analysis easier, empowering the smart video future.
The smart video sector is going through a transitional phase for recording video at scale. It has moved away from recording raw data from a standard camera, to carrying out analysis on the AI-enabled camera itself. In the past, the data analysis was only possible at a centralised location, such as a data centre. However, the rise of on-board AI chips used in smart city technology allows the analytical load to be distributed. The ability to distribute the work is crucial when working at the scale of a smart city, enabling the data to be processed more quickly at the endpoints.
As AI and 4K rise in adoption on smart video cameras, higher video resolutions are driving the demand for more data to be stored on-camera. Various types of cameras are being used today, such as body cameras, dashboard cameras, and new IoT devices and sensors. Video data is so rich nowadays that you can analyse and deduce a lot of valuable information in real-time, instead of post-event.
The role of storage
As a result, storage is critical to the evolution and efficient working of smart video systems. Smart video architectures require innovative storage technologies, which deliver needed flexibility, performance, capacity and reliability. Robust onboard storage must be specially designed to meet the needs arising from multistreaming devices, on-device deep learning systems and AI training solutions.
Storage solutions like Western Digital’s WD Purple Pro line has evolved to provide high data transfer and write speeds, with the capacity to ensure world-class video capture. Western Digital has a strong history of innovation going back to the origins of both hard disc drive technology and flash technology. The company works closely with the market- and innovation leaders in smart video to develop a deep understanding of today’s and tomorrow’s advances in AI-enabled architectures.
WD Purple Pro is engineered with the advanced capabilities needed for high-end smart video solutions, including cameras, network video recorders (NVRs) and back-end video analytics servers. It is purpose-built for 24/7 operating environments, and rated for high endurance and demanding AI workloads. Western Digital provides storage technology that protects and delivers video data to help systems prevent loss, improve situational awareness, and increase business efficiency.
Storage-enabled AI
Improved workload and performance is important, ensuring that drives can keep up with the demands of AI functionality, including pattern matching and object recognition. By combining video stream recording optimisation with top-tier durability and capacity, smart video solutions and AI analytics have the necessary foundations in place to operate at optimum levels for thousands of hours.
NVRs and video management systems (VMSs) are getting smarter. Deep-learning algorithms go beyond simple movement detection to enable advanced capabilities to drive improvements in many industries and settings, including retail, smart cities and entertainment to name a few. AI-enabled VMSs are being architected for new graphic processing units (GPUs) and central procession units (CPUs) to improve overall deep-learning capability and speed algorithms related to object identification.
NVRs with deep learning require greater storage capacity and sophisticated processing versus individual cameras, enabling them to perform more advanced analytics. For example, finding a particular image from weeks or months of stored video, or the creation of traffic heat maps from hours of retail surveillance video.
The WD Purple Pro family is specifically designed and engineered for high performance, capacity, reliability and endurance for advanced AI-enabled smart video recorders, appliances and servers. WD Purple Pro drives feature AllFrame AI technology, which helps reduce frame loss and improve overall video playback. It not only enables recording of 64 HD single-streams, but also supports up to 32 AI streams per drive for deep learning analytics within the system.
Behind the innovation
Smart video can play a vital role increasing public safety, by promoting safe driving practices through the monitoring fleet movements, or by detecting flaws and deviations in a product line to avoid potentially dangerous products reaching consumers. Additionally, home security systems, including smart protection and alert systems , greatly benefit from the use of smart video.
The success of smart video relies on a robust and resilient storage architecture that can effectively keep up with heavy workloads. As smart video-use cases proliferate throughout security and logistics landscapes, the hidden data storage complexities should not be forgotten.
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