This 30 second video shows a beach with the waves coming on to the shore. Constantly changing foamy backgrounds like this might cause false alarms. However, with the implementation of Image-DNA the detection zones do not go into alarm until seagulls fly across the surf.

This 30 second video shows a beach with the waves coming on to the shore. The detection zones do not go into alarm until seagulls fly across the surf. There is no audio. To replay this you may have to reload the page.

Setting up these detection zones merely required that the operator draw a few boxes: there were no parameters to set and no other decisions to make. The simplicity of the setup of course means that anything moving across the field of view, in any direction, would be detected.

The Cobalt software was specifically targeted at handling the problem of complex ever-changing foregrounds and backgrounds. The key to making this work was the use of Image-DNA which, among other things, characterizes textures and can distinguish changes in texture. Here the background sea has a particular texture that is quite different from that of the seagulls.