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A new artificial intelligence-powered software has hit the Australian market, with the software on offer to intelligence and law enforcement bodies.
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BrainChip, which has offices in Western Australia and California, has released its new product BrainChip Studio that can rapidly search extensive amounts of video footage to identify patterns or faces.
The aim of the new technology is to assist in combating national security threats, terrorism and crime.
The software, which has been in development for more than 10 years, uses an AI technology called a spiking neural network, a type of neuromorphic computing that simulates the functionality of human visual tract. As such, it is capable of tracking and marking each face in real time and plotting a person’s movement — through recognising their face — across a number of video cameras.
"BrainChip Studio’s forensic search capabilities tames this massive amount of video information, making it practical for a single individual to search for exactly what they need across multiple video sources," said the company's senior vice president of marketing and business development Bob Beachler.
"BrainChip Studio’s spiking neural networks can be trained on a single image in milliseconds, enabling rapid searches of video for patterns not known a priori. This technology has the added benefit of being able to recognise patterns in low-resolution, noisy environments, making it ideal for the large amount of previously installed video surveillance systems."
The software includes advanced facial detection, extraction and classification algorithms and can work on low resolution video, requiring only a 24x24 pixel image to detect and classify faces.
BrainChip said that in a recent field trial BrainChip Studio processed over 500,000 facial images in over 3.5 hours across eight cameras.
Founder of BrainChip Peter van der Made said the technology will also stand up in environments where cloud connectivity is not easy to come by.
"Unlike current convolutional neural network technologies that require extensive pre-labelled datasets and expensive cloud-based training and acceleration, BrainChip’s spiking neural network can be implemented in software with traditional CPUs and trained on-premise," said van der Made.
"Therefore, BrainChip Studio can be deployed in the field in highly secure environments that may not have cloud connectivity."
Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has been using facial recognition software for more than a decade as a means to help detect passport fraud. It has also reportedly worked with Defence Science and Technology Gropup on high-tech facial biometrics research intended to help develop certain standards for image comparisons, with the hopes of establishing a facial examination that can be recognised in forensic science.
