According to ther manufacturer, the AVD patented Ulysses is the most accurate people counter available today. Traditional thermal counters are sensitive to the effects of air conditioners, the sun and do not work in outside locations. Video based sensors are sensitive to light changes and shadows and cannot operate at night or in dark environments. Ulysses offers superior performance to existing sensors and overcomes all these issues by incorporating AVD's proprietary volumetric and tracking technologies.

Ulysses can operate stand alone or can be networked together to produce a real time footfall map of visitor numbers across one or more given locations. Visitor count information combined with retail analytics allows retail operation managers to measure key performance indicators such as footfall, customer to sales ratios, marketing cost per thousand (CPM) and shoppers per square foot (SSF). Analysis of these metrics can yield significant savings to the retailer, however it is estimated that only 20% of retailers actively exploit people counting information.

As the area of retail business analytics matures, an increased return on investment is achieved. A greater emphasis will be placed on obtaining accurate visitor traffic from a high number of locations that represents the true movement of customer traffic. Ulysses, fulfills this requirement as it allows for distributed, cost efficient and highly scalable systems to be installed. Ulysses volume based sensor is accurate, simple to install, easy to maintain, compact and robust.

Niall Dorr, commercial director, AVD commented: "Ulysses is a significant advance in people counting technologies. Ulysses overcomes many of the issues associated with current technologies that do not measure footfall accurately. As the benefits of applying retail analytics is realized, the demand for accurate data will be a priority consideration. I am delighted to say the AVD Ulysses satisfies this requirement with over 99% recorded accuracy. This sensor is compatible with our Traffic Central suite of reporting software which allows retailers to view and evaluate the recorded footfall. People counting zones can be automatically set from one custom interface allowing users to control all zones from one location. Users can choose to receive automated daily, weekly or monthly summary reports. The scalable solution is quick and easy to install and can be deployed on a LAN or Wi-Fi network."