Researchers have developed a video surveillance system that is designed to use artificial intelligence to reason about human activity. This project was funded by the U.S. Army; its main purpose is the flagging of abnormal behavior.

This information was brought to our attention by SC Magazine in their article, “Researchers develop ‘thinking’ surveillance system.” Eventually they want to predict the actions of people being observed. Of course, this would come after thorough semantic analysis and reasoning. The research builds on a Carnegie Mellon cognitive model  and software, called ACT-R.

Predictive video analysis is an interesting path for semantic technology. The results will be equally interesting, I am sure.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.