I-Corps: Computer Vision for Tracking People in Different Scenarios

在几个购物中心(如Bed，Bath；Beyond)拥有大量门店的大型零售连锁店可能会设计广告活动，在每个商店内展示新商品或特色促销商品，然后努力评估每一次活动的成功。除了跟踪他们的收入，零售商可能会试图衡量每家门店外的客流量、进入门店的人数百分比、人们如何在整个门店内移动、在整个门店的每个位置花费的时间等。虽然目前有工具和技术可以帮助这些努力，但它们提供的数据非常粗糙，导致市场需求得不到满足。今天，红外相机被用来满足上述需求，但其估计是粗略的。其他现有的解决方案包括在特定位置安装摄像头，以在商店的给定部分(例如，热区或入口来计数进入的人)中发现人。它们也被用来区分不同类型的人(孩子和成年人)。但这些现有的方法和技术是不可靠和不适应的(例如，随着时间的推移调整遮挡或自然光的变化以获得准确的计数)，因此无法向零售连锁店提供准确的结果。i-Corps团队正在开发以新的和创新的方式满足这一市场需求的技术，使用目前产品中没有的技术，并提供比市场上现有解决方案更准确和更高保真的数据。正在开发的解决方案将易于使用、成本低且可靠。建议的技术既适用于室内数据，也适用于室外数据(考虑了光线变化)。为了开发解决方案和商业模式，该团队计划与大型零售店建立关系，以进一步评估他们的需求以及在哪里最好地应用这项技术。除了零售市场，人们相信拟议中的技术将在机场、火车/汽车站和所有监控活动中产生商业影响。显然，安全是一个需要这种准确测量人员行动的技术的领域。有了i-Corps团队正在开发的技术，零售商将获得关于其门店内外活动的更准确和可靠的数据(例如橱窗营销活动的结果)。这将使他们能够改善门店运营，并为客户提供更好的体验。

A large retail chain with numerous stores in several shopping malls (e.g., Bed, Bath & Beyond) may devise advertising campaigns in which they display new items or feature promotional items within each store, and then endeavor to evaluate the success of each campaign. In addition to tracking their revenues, the retailer may seek to measure traffic outside each store, the percentage of people who enter the store, how people move throughout the store, time spent in each location throughout the store, etc. While there are tools and technologies currently available to assist with these efforts, they provide very crude data, resulting in an unmet market need. Today, infrared cameras are used to address the needs described above, but are crude in their estimates. Other existing solutions include mounted cameras in specific locations to spot people in a given part of the store (e.g., hot zones or entrances to count people entering). They are also used to distinguish different types of people (kids versus adults). But these existing methods and technologies are unreliable and unadaptable (e.g., adjusting to occlusions or changes in natural light over time to get an accurate count), and therefore fail to deliver accurate results to the retail chains.This I-Corps team is developing technology that addresses this market need in new and innovative ways, using technology not present in products today and providing more accurate and higher fidelity data than existing solutions on the market. The solution being developed will be easy to use, low cost, and reliable. The proposed technology is applicable to both indoor and outdoor data (accounting for light variations). To develop the solution and business model, the team plans to establish relationships with large retail stores to further assess their needs and where the technology will be best applied. Beyond the retail market, it is believed that the proposed technology will have commercial impact in airports, train/bus stations, and all surveillance activities. Clearly, security is an area where this technology of accurate measurement of people's movements is necessary. With the technology this I-Corps team is developing, retailers will receive more accurate and reliable data about the activities happening in and around their stores (such as the result of a window marketing campaign). This will enable them to improve store operations and provide better experiences to customers.