Surveillance gearSightlogix: ruggedized outdoor surveillance gear
The company was founded to address the need to create a rugged and automated outdoor video system which reduces the number of false alarms caused by outdoor environmental variations; the company’s cameras attain a large range of coverage area, reducing the number of necessary cameras, mounting poles, communications links, video, and storage channels
New Jersey-based Sightlogix, a manufacturer of visible and thermal outdoor video analytics cameras encourages their customers never to take their eyes off their perimeter. The company was founded to address the need to create a rugged and automated outdoor video system which reduces the number of false alarms caused by outdoor environmental variations. Industry analyst Lindsay Voss from Frost & Sullivan hailed the technology: “SightLogix intelligent video systems embrace innovative technology to reach new levels of accuracy and reliability while being virtually impervious to the challenges of an outdoor environment, a ground-breaking achievement.”
Their NEMA4X nitrogen-filled enclosure cameras can detect, locate, and track intrusions over large areas with a high probability of detection (PD) and low nuisance alarm rates (NAR). The system was first conceived by CEO and co-founder John Romanowich six months after the 9/11 attacks. After a security survey of Ground Zero, Romanowich found the failure of the automated systems at the site a reason to develop a viable outdoor surveillance solution. In 2004 Romanowich assembled a team of entrepreneurs, video analytics experts, and engineers from Sarnoff and AT&T Bell Labs to found the company.
The company has since provided its security solution to companies in commercial security, homeland security, and military surveillance, including ADT, Cisco, EDS, GTSI, Honeywell, Lockheed, SAIC, Raytheon, and Siemens. The company’s technology has also been applied to ports, water treatment plants, railway sides, petrochemical facilities, data centers, and universities (King Abdulla University of Science and Tech. in Saudi Arabia as of July 2009).
An October 2010 press release detailed Buffalo Niagara International Airport’s (BNIA) decision to purchase SightLogix’s video intrusion detection system. Captain Christopher Chiodo, Security Coordinator for BNIA endorsed the company’s technology: “As the region’s fastest growing airport, we strive to provide the highest levels of security using best-in-class technology.”
SightLogix positions itself above their competitors because of the range and accuracy of coverage area attained by their cameras, which reduces the number of necessary cameras, mounting poles, communications links, video, and storage channels. Their product line includes: thermal and visible SightSensor, WideView SightSensor, SightTracker, rapid deployment kit, video security trailer, and SightMonitor, a configuration management and reporting software application that accompanies all the aforementioned devices. Depending on the location and specific needs of the client, the company encourages the use of SightTracker, which autonomously steers and zooms a pan-tilted zoom camera to the GPS-based target location provided by an associated SightSensor camera which when combined, provides for the most constant and holistic surveillance option.
SightLogix cameras relay target location data and video over the IP network for display onto third party video monitoring or PSIM systems such as Amag, Avigilon, Cisco, and most recently Verint Sytems Inc., a provider of actionable intelligence solutions and security services. The partnership with Verint, whose technologies capture, distill, and analyze voice, video, and unstructured text will provide “…greater system functionality,” according to Eran Wachman, vice president of product management, Verint.
The georegistering abilities of the company’s cameras allow them to accurately determine size, speed and bearing of detected objects and set filtering rules according to the client’s security needs. At the ASIS conference, Romanowich described what was happening in a nighttime surveillance video feed of a large body of water and a single person walking on land a few hundred yards away: “Here we have a large body of water and a few trees swaying in the wind. These environmental factors would normally trigger other motion-sensitive surveillance systems but our cameras our able to ignore the motion caused by the outdoor elements and very accurately detect a person-sized object walking toward the camera at a great distance away.”
The company hopes to drive its technology forward by improving its scalability and gaining recognition since accuracy in outdoor analytics “cannot be solved with a software solution,” according to Romanowich. “Detecting what it is, where it is, and how large it is are very complex tasks that are best accomplished by bringing a high degree of image processing to the edge, in the camera itself.” When asked about the company’s next focus, Romanowich replied: “Chemical facilities are the next big step for the company—CFATS certification for anti-terrorist standards is our priority.”
