“We have seen over the past years that there is an increasing demand for analytics in different applications”, says Thomas Lausten, who recently was appointed as the new Mobotix CEO.

Martin Gren says retailers want video surveillance for operational purposes and that they are getting more and more usage of their video surveillance systems: “The main vertical I have seen for video analytics is retail, because in retail, if results are not a hundred per cent right it is still okay, but for physical security you typically need very high reliability”, he says.

Boudewijn Hak, Regional BU Marketing, Bosch, stresses that Bosch receive more requests about video analytics applications beyond security, for example gathering business statistics and providing shop optimisation in order for retailers to know how customers move in a store.

Tim Biddulph, Head of Product Management at Hanwha, believes retail analytics like people counting, heat mapping and queue management are the most popular video analytics functions today.

“These are practical analytic functions that people can implement really quickly and make a difference to their business tomorrow”, he says.

William Ku, Vice President, Brand Business Division, Vivotek, says: “We see that deep learning is starting right now. Probably, it will gradually fit into real applications, I think it will take three to five years until we have good deep learning and AI in video analytics. The technology is developing very fast and keeps improving.”

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