Safety is of highest importance for the energy companies, and for any infrastructure owner companies, and at the same time a difficult challenge to cope with. Safety of people moving within the infrastructures and sites, as well as safe working conditions for the operative personnel, has to be secured in any condition. This is why Morpho Inc. entered a collaboration with a leading Japanese energy utility to provide them with an automated AI based surveillance solution.
The energy company, operating more than 100 hydro-power plants in Japan, has a responsibility to make sure that safety of their plant areas is actively secured. The specific need was to be able to detect and alert when a human enters a restricted or forbidden area within their power plant sites.
The former solution had problems both by making too many false alarms, and in coping with difficult weather and lightning conditions. This made the work of control room personnel very challenging. They had to make repetitive site visits to verify the reason for an alert, or that it was a case of a false alarm. The data collection was made by using a basic surveillance video camera.
The technology solution delivered that combines Morpho SoftNeuro® Fast AI Inference technology and deep learning AI modeling has several advanced capabilities to solve the challenge. These include:
- Ability to identify a human from far distant, a tiny person detection
- Ability to manage and identify distractions like animals, shadows and light reflections
- Ability to cope with difficult conditions like snow, rain, night, mist, haze etc.
- The solution approach uses live stream video data, which enables instant risk detection
- The solution preserves privacy by enabling detecting a human, but not identifying the person
The first deployment of the solution on a hydro-electric power plant site confirmed that the solution has multiple significant benefits for the company – both for its operations and to control room personnel:
- The solution enabled carrying out the surveillance work remotely, which enabled cost savings and improved the personnel work conditions and well-being
- The solution increased human safety of the operative personnel, not having go and do the site checks, as well as of persons, who might enter these dangerous areas
- Both of these benefits are especially relevant as the solution works reliably in difficult weather conditions
The customer is owning and operating over 100 hydro power plants in Japan. In the future they are planning to take the solution into use in many sites, which will enable them to achieve significant financial benefits through advanced surveillance automation. Solution roll out will also lower the workload relating to this type of monitoring and control work so that the operative personnel can focus on more productive and versatile work tasks.
This technology solution and customer case is an excellent example of how Top Data Science is benefiting from Morpho’s leading edge image analysis technologies. By utilizing the technologies highlighted above, as well as our expertise in developing and deploying Computer Vision to different customer problems, we can help organizations to take high-performing and reliable AI solutions into use also in difficult conditions.
For more information, please contact:
Shun Hirai
CEO, Top Data Science
[email protected]
+358 50 325 6756
Kai Lehtinen
COO, Top Data Science
[email protected]
+358 40 591 2369
