The news followed a note of caution from Dieter Joecker, Head of CCTV Global Product Management for Bosch Security Systems, about the dangers of manufacturers over-selling the capabilities of 'intelligent video' in the short-term, or making claims against rival manufacturers' products that cannot be reliably compared or validated. His estimate is that it will take until 2025 to replicate human response.

Herr Joecker was speaking at one of a series of recent industry seminars in which he traced the evolution of VCA and its future role in combating terrorism and crime "We need to be realistic about what VCA can do today, and our hopes of what it might do in the future," he said.

"VCA has a critical role in 'assisting' with security, but its capabilities are still decades away from actually 'solving it'. Even with all of the resources of a business like Bosch, VCA technology capable of intelligent analysis comparable to humans won't be available until at least 2025, and in that time, the role of VCA will extend far beyond security in the future, assisting with driver safety in vehicles and detecting and preventing fires.

"What the CCTV industry is good at today is providing you with information after the event, but no so good in helping to prevent that incident from occurring in the first place," Herr Joecker continued. "The most advanced VCA products use mathematical models and draw conclusions from those models, but such 'intelligence' is still a long way off human perception and capability."

By way of illustration, Herr Joecker picked on the theme of 'loitering', or to be more accurate, 'idle objects'. "A product might detect a person and generate an alarm because they appear to be loitering based on the mathematical model and the parameters that have been set. A human being looking at that same person, however, can instantly see that in fact it is someone taking a long time to decide which pair of shoes they want to buy!"

Of particular concern to Herr Joecker was the lack of any current standards or reliable comparison tests between systems or between algorithms: "Until such time as there are proper benchmarks in place and proper standards, there is always the danger of over-selling," he added.

The seminars were held across the UK in February, and have proved so successful that Bosch intends to announce further dates shortly.

Jeremy Hockham, Managing Director of Bosch Security Systems comments "The seminars attracted a good cross section of the industry who share our excitement about the future potential of VCA. Feedback has been excellent, with most in agreement that it was one of the most frank and honest appraisals of the technology available today, and considerable interest shown in the resources Bosch is committing to the technology of the future."