Nec Corporation

Nec Laboratories America, Inc.

Kunal Rao

Srimat T Chakradhar

Giuseppe Coviello

Murugan Sankaradas

Srihari Cadambi

Min Feng

Oliver Po

Yi Yang

Wang-Pin Hsiung

Utsav Drolia

Cheng-Hong Li

Rajat Phull

Biplob Kumar Debnath

Souvik Bhattacherjee

Murugan Sankaradass

Sibendu Paul

Anousheh Gholami

Amit Redkar

Ravi Kailasam Rajendran

Vivek Aswal

Systems and methods are provided for dynamically tuning camera parameters in a video analytics system to optimize analytics accuracy. A camera captures a current scene, and optimal camera parameter settings are learned and identified for the current scene using a Reinforcement Learning (RL) engine. The learning includes defining a state within the RL engine as a tuple of two vectors: a first representing current camera parameter values and a second representing measured values of frames of the current scene. Quality of frames is estimated using a quality estimator, and camera parameters are adjusted based on the quality estimator and the RL engine for optimization. Effectiveness of tuning is determined using perceptual Image Quality Assessment (IQA) to quantify a quality measure. Camera parameters are adaptively tuned in real-time based on learned optimal camera parameter settings, state, quality measure, and set of actions, to optimize the analytics accuracy for video analytics tasks.

Adaptive perceptual quality based camera tuning using reinforcement learning

A method for automatically adjusting camera parameters to improve video analytics accuracy during continuously changing environmental conditions is presented. The method includes capturing a video stream from a plurality of cameras, performing video analytics tasks on the video stream, the video analytics tasks defined as analytics units (AUs), applying image processing to the video stream to obtain processed frames, filtering the processed frames through a filter to discard low-quality frames and dynamically fine-tuning parameters of the plurality of cameras. The fine-tuning includes passing the filtered frames to an AU-specific proxy quality evaluator, employing State-Action-Reward-State-Action (SARSA) reinforcement learning (RL) computations to automatically fine-tune the parameters of the plurality of cameras, and based on the reinforcement computations, applying a new policy for an agent to take actions and learn to maximize a reward.

Reinforcement-learning based system for camera parameter tuning to improve analytics

A method for free flow fever screening is presented. The method includes capturing a plurality of frames from thermal data streams and visual data streams related to a same scene to define thermal data frames and visual data frames, detecting and tracking a plurality of individuals moving in a free-flow setting within the visual data frames, and generating a tracking identification for each individual of the plurality of individuals present in a field-of-view of the one or more cameras across several frames of the plurality of frames. The method further includes fusing the thermal data frames and the visual data frames, measuring, by a fever-screener, a temperature of each individual of the plurality of individuals within and across the plurality of frames derived from the thermal data streams and the visual data streams, and generating a notification when a temperature of an individual exceeds a predetermined threshold temperature.

Free flow fever screening

A method for performing resource orchestration for microservices-based 5G applications in a dynamic, heterogenous, multi-tiered compute and network environment is presented. The method includes managing compute requirements and network requirements of a microservices-based application jointly by positioning computing nodes distributed across multiple layers, across edges and at a central cloud, identifying and modeling coupling relationships between compute and network resources for a plurality of microservices, when only application-level requirements are provided, to build coupling functions, solving a multi-objective optimization problem to identify how each of the plurality of microservices are deployed in the dynamic, heterogenous, multi-tiered compute and network environment by employing the coupling functions to jointly optimize resource usage of the compute and network resources across different compute and network slices, and deriving optimal joint network and compute resource allocation and function placement decisions.

Resource orchestration for microservices-based 5G applications

Methods and systems for executing an application include extending a container orchestration system application programming interface (API) to handle objects that specify components of an application. An application representation is executed using the extended container orchestration system API, including the instantiation of one or more services that define a data stream path from a sensor to a device.

Data exchange and transformation in stream computing systems

A method for real-time cross-spectral object association and depth estimation is presented. The method includes synthesizing, by a cross-spectral generative adversarial network (CS-GAN), visual images from different data streams obtained from a plurality of different types of sensors, applying a feature-preserving loss function resulting in real-time pairing of corresponding cross-spectral objects, and applying dual bottleneck residual layers with skip connections to accelerate real-time inference and to accelerate convergence during model training.

Real-time cross-spectral object association and depth estimation

A pull-based communication method for microservices-based real-time streaming video analytics pipelines is provided. The method includes receiving a plurality of frames from a plurality of cameras, each camera including a camera sidecar, arranging a plurality of detectors in layers such that a first detector layer includes detectors with detector sidecars and detector business logic, and the second detector layer includes detectors with only sidecars, arranging a plurality of extractors in layers such that a first extractor layer includes extractors with extractor sidecars and extractor business logic, and the second extractor layer includes extractors with only sidecars, and enabling a mesh controller, during registration, to selectively assign inputs to one or more of the detector sidecars of the first detector layer and one or more of the extractor sidecars of the first extractor layer to pull data items for processing.

Flexible and efficient communication in microservices-based stream analytics pipeline

A method for implementing application self-optimization in serverless edge computing environments is presented. The method includes requesting deployment of an application pipeline on data received from a plurality of sensors, the application pipeline including a plurality of microservices, enabling communication between a plurality of pods and a plurality of analytics units (AUs), each pod of the plurality of pods including a sidecar, determining whether each of the plurality of AUs maintains any state to differentiate between stateful AUs and stateless AUs, scaling the stateful AUs and the stateless AUs, enabling communication directly between the sidecars of the plurality of pods, and reusing and resharing common AUs of the plurality of AUs across different applications.

System for application self-optimization in serverless edge computing environments

A method is provided for managing applications for sensors. In one embodiment, the method includes loading a plurality of applications and links for communicating with a plurality of sensors on a platform having an interface for entry of a requested use case; and copying a configuration from a grouping of application instances being applied to a first sensor performing in a function comprising of the requested use case. The method may further include applying the configuration for the grouping of application instances to a second set of sensors to automatically conform the plurality of sensors on the platform to perform the requested use case.

Managing applications for sensors

Methods and systems for managing communications include identifying a system condition in a distributed computing system comprising a first microservice in communication with a second microservice. A communications method is identified responsive to the identified system condition using a reinforcement learning model that associates communication methods with system conditions. The identified communications method is implemented for communications between the first microservice and the second microservice, such that the first microservice and the second microservice use the identified communications method to transmit data.

Dynamic microservice intercommunication configuration

Systems and methods for network bandwidth optimization, including transmitting sensor data from one or more sensors over a wireless network into a generated network slice, submitting a Quality-of-Service (QoS) request for one or more applications by specifying desired network slice characteristics, and predicting network bandwidth needed for granting the QoS request for the one or more applications using a cost function based on magnitude, direction, and frequency of error. Time-varying network bandwidth usage is continuously monitored, and new QoS requests for the one or more applications are periodically requested based on the monitoring. An updated prediction for updated bandwidth needed for the new QoS request is generated using the cost function, and network bandwidth reservations are iteratively adjusted based on the updated prediction for the new QoS request to provide an amount of network resources to the one or more applications to support the new QoS request.

Dynamic self-optimization of application quality-of-service requests to mobile networks

Systems and methods for determining dwell time is provided. The method includes receiving images of an area including one or more people from one or more cameras, and detecting a presence of each of the one or more people in the received images using a worker. The method further includes receiving by the worker digital facial features stored in a watch list from a master controller, and performing facial recognition and monitoring the dwell time of each of the one or more people. The method further includes determining if each of the one or more people is in the watch list or has exceeded a dwell time threshold.

Video analytics system for dwell-time determinations

Methods and systems for deploying a video analytics system include determining one or more applications for a security system in an environment, including one or more constraints. Each functional module in a directed graph representation of one or more applications is profiled to generate one or more configurations for each functional module. The nodes of each graph representation represent functional modules of the respective application, and repeated module configurations are skipped. Resource usage for each of the one or more applications is estimated using the one or more configurations of each functional module and the one or more constraints. The one or more applications are deployed in the environment.

Automatic profiling of video analytics applications

A method for tracing individuals through physical spaces that includes registering cameras in groupings relating a physical space. The method further includes performing local video monitoring including a video sensor input that outputs frames from inputs from recording with the cameras in the groupings, a face detection application for extracting faces from the output frames, and a face matching application for matching faces extracted from the output frames to a watchlist, and a local movement monitor that assigns tracks to the matched faces. The method further includes performing a global monitor including a biometrics monitor for preparing the watchlist of faces, the watchlist of faces being updated when a new face is detected by the cameras in the groupings, and a global movement monitor that combines the outputs from the assigned tracks to the matched faces to launch a report regarding individual population traveling to the physical spaces.

Tracking within and across facilities

A method for optimal placement of microservices of a micro-services-based application in a multi-tiered computing network environment employing 5G technology is presented. The method includes accessing a centralized server or cloud to request a set of services to be deployed on a plurality of sensors associated with a plurality of devices, the set of services including launching an application on a device of the plurality of devices, modeling the application as a directed graph with vertices being microservices and edges representing communication between the microservices, assigning each of the vertices of the directed graph with two cost weights, employing an edge monitor (EM), an edge scheduler (ES), an alerts-manager at edge (AM-E), and a file transfer (FT) at the edge to handle partitioning of the microservices, and dynamically mapping the microservices to the edge or the cloud to satisfy application-specific response times.

Growing community of inventors

Monroe, NJ, United States of America

Kunal Rao