Cameras have become a lot smarter

By ANDREW VANACORE

The surveillance cameras at Big Y, a Massachusetts grocery chain, are not just passively recording customers and staff. They’re studying checkout lines for signs of “sweethearting.”

That’s when cashiers use subtle tricks to pass free goods to friends: obscuring the bar code, slipping an item behind the scanner, passing two items at a time but charging for one.

There simply aren’t enough watchful human eyes to keep it from happening. So Big Y is using technology to block it — with implications far beyond dishonest cashiers.

Mathematical algorithms embedded in the stores’ new security system pick out sweethearting on their own. There’s no need for a security guard watching banks of video monitors or reviewing hours of grainy footage. When the system thinks it’s spotted evidence, it alerts management on a computer screen and offers up the footage.

The possibilities that researchers envision for this kind of technology have the ring of science fiction. Think of systems that spot abandoned packages on a train platform or alert an airline crew to a potential terrorist on board. Already, cities such as Chicago have invested in “anomaly detection” cameras around town, linked to emergency headquarters. The city plans to announce this week that it is using the technology at Navy Pier, one of Chicago’s best-known attractions.

But just how smart have these cameras really become?

Big Y’s security system comes from a Cambridge, Mass.-based company called StopLift Inc. The technology works by scouring video pixels for various gestures and deciding whether they add up to a normal transaction at the register or not.

The task grows much more complicated if you’re trying to, say, spot the one hijacker among a plane full of innocent passengers.

A central computer would take on the job of compiling data from the cameras — and from audio sensors and the plane itself, among other sources — and deciding whether a credible threat existed before alerting the crew.

Officials in Chicago are already sold on the idea that cameras can detect a variety of threats. Ray Orozco, Chicago’s head of emergency management, said he can’t reveal specific threats the system may have detected, for fear of compromising security.