Vitamin D Video is out of beta and ready to purchase. Better still, the most basic package is free!

Ground breaking surveillance software, Vitamin D Video, is now available for sale at an impressively low price. I had a chance to review the program’s impressive object recognition and recording capabilities when I covered the beta launch a few months ago. This is a really cool application of limited artificial intelligence. Vitamin D Video uses algorithms based on human brain activity to quickly identify objects in a video feed. By setting the controls, you can specify events that will trigger a recording, an email alert, or an audio notice. Vitamin D not only acts like an electronic watchdog for your camera, it can take hours of monotonous footage and reduce it down to a highlight reel you want to watch. During the beta, testers used the program for some really cool applications you can read about on the VDV site. Interested in getting a copy for yourself? It’s free if you only want to use it on one camera. Two cameras and you’ll have to pay $50. Or you can pay $200 and use as many cameras as you like from one computer. That cheap price tag could launch Vitamin D Video to dominate the small business and home market. Catch a new demo video of the program below.

Vitamin D Video is based on Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM), a learning and pattern recognition technology developed by Numenta. HTM is modeled on the activity of the human neocortex, and that’s the sort of brain-based narrow AI that really gets us excited here at the Hub. Sure, Vitamin D Video is likely to make some major waves by offering effective and inexpensive surveillance software. More importantly though, HTM and other brain-based technologies will continue to leverage the lessons of neuroscience to further the development of AI. It makes you wonder what kind of awesome technology we’ll get once the Blue Brain Project and other such neurological endeavors are finished. Maybe one day we’ll have cheap software that protects and serves instead of just observing and reporting.

[screen capture and video credit: Vitamin D Video]

Vitamin D Video is out in Beta. The User interface is simple and easy to use, but designing filters is something of an art.

To give you some background, Vitamin D Video uses Hierarchical Temporal Memory architecture first developed by Numenta to help recognize objects of importance even if they are moving, clipped, or otherwise complicated. The beta works with IP cameras or webcams, with user defined filters that you design through a simple interface. People are highlighted in yellow boxes, objects in green, and recording can be triggered as doors open, things move into a space, etc. If successful, VDV could improve the use of security cameras world over, as a computer could be used to actively monitor and sift through video in place of costly (and easily bored) humans. Vitamin D hopes that it will become the cheap, easy, but also sophisticated alternative to the more costly video recognition software already on the market.

While there are enough kinks to demonstrate that it is obviously still in beta, overall Vitamin D Video runs well. I had the software downloaded, calibrated, and running in less than 10 minutes start to finish. Using just my webcam, I was able to test VDV’s object and person recognition scanning and its email and sound notification. Basically, I ran the camera for 3 hours and told VDV to record anytime I walked in the room, or when an object touched my ceiling. These filters were fairly easy to build on my own, though I did have to consult the Vitamin D reference guide here and there.

The crazy thing was, while VDV is built as a means to reduce the amount of video you have to sift through, my filters didn’t work in that manner. Oh, there was some reduction, I went from three hours of footage to a highlight reel that was about one hour long, but’s still too much to watch quickly. Passing through the selected clips at 3x speed helped, but not much. The problem was that my filters were too broad and triggered too easily. That isn’t VDV’s fault, but it does point out an issue with this program. While it is definitely easy to get started, it will take a good period of trial and error before a user feels confident that they are only going to record what they want.

As for the details of my personal experience…well let me preface this by saying that I was giddy getting to play with a new toy. I experimented with different lighting levels, object transparency, and speed of travel. VDV can track a black plastic hair comb as it hits a white ceiling. It isn’t fooled if you walk in backwards or with your shirt pulled over your head. It can even notice if a clear piece of plastic is slowly brought into frame (though it may have triggered off the attached piece of string). Oh, and I can verify that a grown human running at full speed and leaping through the air will be detected. And slightly injured.

There were some limits. The software had trouble triggering when an object was in front of an overexposed white background in strong light. VDV couldn’t always identify objects as objects and people as people (my hair, judging by the green box, is only sometimes human). It often assumed that a hand holding an object was part of the object. All of these limitations may have easy software fixes (I’m still reading through the guide and testing the program to see) but they have even easier user fixes: don’t point your camera at a light source, and take extra care when designing your filters. Ultimately, unless you’re looking for a polar bear in a blizzard I think Vitamin D Video can probably work just fine for any personal or small business applications you can dream up.

Also, why these aren’t limitations exactly, I was instantly annoyed by the audio and email notifications. Again, my triggers were too sensitive, but hearing “person detected…recording video” every five seconds drove me homicidal very quickly. You can use custom .wav files for audio notifications. Hearing Christopher Walken say hello when you walk into a room is fun, but still annoying after 20 triggers. The email system was the same…but with email. I’m sure you can imagine.

Still, I’m happy to report that everything in the beta seems to work, if a bit slowly. VDV takes a long time to load as it organizes your clips for you. I once thought my computer had frozen, but with Vista, that’s pretty much par for the course. VDV also wants to use 25 gigabytes to store data, but I think that’s to be expected considering its function. If you’d like to play with the new software, try signing up for the beta and let me know what you think. For now, I’m going back to testing. I wonder if VDV will recognize a mannequin as a human being.

[photo and video credit: Vitamin D Video]

By thinking like a human, computers can efficiently recognize important people and objects. The yellow box knows where you are!

Now that we can program a computer to reason somewhat like a human brain, it seems a little cruel to then set that artificial intelligence to one of the most mind-numbing tasks around: watching security footage. Jeff Hawkins and his company Numenta have developed hierarchical temporal memory (HTM) a means of solving information overload by helping a computer filter and sort the way a brain does. The latest application of HTM is Vitamin D Video, a new company that produces software that will allow you to convert hours of boring video into a shorter highlight reel. Vitamin D can track people and objects allowing you to find only those video segments that interest you. TV news interns and CCTV watchmen everywhere are rejoicing.

As you know, we’ve discussed Jeff Hawkins and Numenta’s approach to artificial intelligence before. The basic premise is that the human brain works as a pattern prediction engine. It captures new information, compares it to old, determines what it thinks will happen, and waits for feedback to refine its understanding. At the heart of HTM is the ability to break down tasks into smaller more manageable chunks and make more accurate predictions. While Hawkins’ approach to AI is better stated as computing based on human reasoning patterns, it has the potential to give us very efficient learning machines. Vitamin D serves as a wonderful example. Whereas most object/person recognition software can cost thousands of dollars, HTM allows Vitamin D Video to be produced cheaply enough to be released in a free beta version. You can sign up here for the beta release coming this fall.

Vitamin D Video uses HTM to help it recognize the movement and static positions of objects and humans. The pattern recognition is sophisticated enough to discover people moving through trees, partially covered by other objects, and facing in any direction. The software interface allows you to set up intuitive filters such as “I want to see when someone opens this door,” and you highlight on the screen which door you want. Similar filters exist for crossing lines, movement in and out of frame, etc. Email alerts can be linked to notify you when a filter is triggered in realtime. Unlike more costly software, Vitamin D is supposed to work straight out of the box with no calibration required.

The impact of Vitamin D software is going to come in several waves. First, there’s the most obvious use of the product: video sorting/filtering. If Vitamin D can prove itself in the retail/commercial market, it may be expanded into law enforcement. Remember all those CCTV cameras in London that weren’t working? Imagine what will happen when police are no longer intimidated by having to wade through hundreds of hours of security footage. They can just use Vitamin D to help them find when a crime was committed. Even better, with the correct filters and email alerts, police could be informed as a crime was happening. That’s a huge step forward and would solve a major complaint about the London CCTV system. Of course, making that Orwellian network of cameras popular may be beyond even Vitamin D.

A second generation of Vitamin D may pick up on more complex clues than position and movement. Projects like Humabio which have developed facial and gait recognition capabilities, are going to be used in high security areas. Realtime monitoring of how you look and walk is used to determine your emotional state and will tell guards if you’re a potential terrorist. Using HTM, I could see Vitamin D one day working in a similar fashion but with greater speed and efficiency

Humanoid robots often depend on object/person recognition software to navigate. The pattern recognition portions of Vitamin D could be adapted to enhance the efficiency of such systems. I wonder if the ACE robot that gets lost in Munich would benefit from HTM.

Of course, the ultimate goal may be an artificial intelligence that meets or exceeds human pattern recognition and prediction abilities. While there are many differing opinions on what makes humans intelligent, pattern recognition and prediction are one of the few areas where humans consistently outperform computers. That’s why you’re sometimes asked to read an image of squiggly letters and numbers to verify a password or registration. As machines become more adept in these fields, the boundaries between human and artificial intelligence will blur.

Whether or not Hawkins and Numenta lead us to AI, the benefits of HTM are here now with offshoot companies like Vitamin D Inc. Numenta makes it’s HTM based software freely available, so we could see different companies create some remarkable uses of the technology. I would love to see the next generation of robots recognize people and objects in order to interact with them in a more intelligent way. Maybe my Roomba will finally stop trying to break my ankle.

I am a big fan of Jeff Hawkins…here is a short plug about him:
After inventing the Palm Pilot Jeff Hawkins left the tech industry to pursue his dream to unlock the secrets of the brain.  His book On Intelligence is a fabulous read for those looking for a straightforward introduction to the inner workings of the brain that doesn’t require a neuroscience degree to understand.