Slashdot Mirror
Surveillance Cameras Used To Study Customer Behavior
An anonymous reader writes "Technology Review reports on a startup with software used by stores to track, count and log people captured by security cameras. Prism Skylab's technology can produce heatmaps showing where people went and produce other statistics that the company claims offer tracking and analytics like those used online for the real world. One use case is for businesses to correlate online promotions and deals — such as Groupon offers — with real world footfall and in-store behavior."
its not IF but WHEN.
everyone who has an interest in 'tracking' will want to be able to ID people and know where they are.
govs want this, businesses want this, 'law' enforcement wants this.
the only people who don't are the people; and they have no power anymore in the western (or eastern!) countries.
its been said each generation, but its true here: I fear or the world our kids are going to inherit. it does not sound at all like a world I want want. I can see where things are going. Do Not Want.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
When you think you may be on a security camera behave oddly.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
http://xkcd.com/570/
So they identifying the people and sending them personal targeted spam? ( after they confirm your bank balance of course )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Target has been doing this for many years; in house. They have had software for years which spots people who move around like a shop lifter and many years before that they kept logs of the parking lot car plates so they could ID a crook from anywhere in the store by following them back to their car. This was not widely known either... now people probably assume the parking lot has cameras but back in the 90s not so much. BTW, they are interested in ID of people by their walking gate and I would be surprised if they weren't supporting such research along with the UK.
Target also has one of the best computer forensics teams in the nation, way better than the FBI and they even do work for the government. All in house; if they didn't contract it out we'd probably not know about it.
I think this story illustrates that the RFID is completely unnecessary.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
You know with all the outrage Slashdot has with this type of stuff...
You got to admit it is pretty cool use of computer science....
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
What is next? Mind reader? Do we have to wear tin caps not because we are crazy, but because we want to stay normal, not-tracked and not-measured???
Football? What?, oh wait, misread. Someone tell me I'm not alone in that error.
At the end of the day does this yield better results than counting sales at the close of business?
More complicated results, perhaps, but after analyzing traffic patterns all day long studying dwell time at displays, does it really yield anything useful that the store owner can actually act upon, re-arranging the displays, etc?
And if they do act on the data, it will almost certainly be to benefit one product area vs another. Will there be any net gain for the store as a whole?
Won't wholesalers with clout demand the data and push hard for the best locations or shelving decisions? If you have data, you are going to be forced to share it sooner or later, and when everyone is rushing past the Laptop counters to get to the TV display area, is there anything short of re-arranging the store you can do about it? Won't Dell, HP, and Apple, insist on being on the high traffic routes? Didn't the store owner just lose control?
And at the end of the day, is it different in any way from just tallying sales ?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
The Hentai row in the comic book store isn't as private as you think it is.
Have gnu, will travel.
Doubtless there will be volumous FUD in relation to this technology, however I don't see there being a problem here. Consider a book shop. This technology could be utilised to provide the book shop with verifiable information regarding what the most popular categories of books are and thus enable them to make informed decisions about which departments / shelves / sections to expand and which they could safely contract. The end effect being that customers gain access to a greater variety of books concerning their favourite subject and the store is empowered to make the most efficient use of the space available to them. If it were possible to track and more significantly identify people via this technology then I'd agree that there would be privacy issues that ought to be dealt with prior to the system being used, however the linked article quite specifically mentions that scenario as being deliberately impossible.
It seems to me that a lot of people who have studied image processing/video processing cannot come up with a benevolent/non-malignant use of their skills that also generates an income they can live on, and wind up building some computer vision algorithm or software that tracks/identifies/spies on people for profit instead. There are so many positive things that can be done with image processing, like - to name just one example - upgrading/restoring 1000s of hours of old archive footage to 21st Century clarity/sharpness. Or, for example, sifting through medical imagery and looking for signs of disease/tumors/tissue anomalies. Or converting 2D content to Stereoscopic 3D content. Instead of doing that, and similar, some cretins choose to build one digital surveillance/biometric ID system after another, for quick profit, and the whole world suffers the loss of regular, everyday privacy these systems cause. This sort of stuff should be banned from Public Spaces. It doesn't help Joe/Jane Ordinary live better. It just gives companies - including bricks and mortar companies now - fancy new tools to spy on their customers. It used to be that staying away from Facebook and similar privacy destroyers gave you some tangible privacy. Now, with the help of intelligent computer vision software peering through dumb surveillance cameras, every public location/shopping space becomes another Facebook that wants to track & surveil you. And this time you can't opt out at all! Again, this stuff should be banned for the good of everyone.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
All those decades of literature, art and film describing future dystopian societies gone to waste. Culture fail.
Guess I'll have to carry binoculars so I can walk in the door and look around without visiting everything.
step 1: observe correlation: the more time people spend in your store, the more they buy
step 2: optimize placement of stuff so that people stay longer in store
step 3: profit!
side effect: waste time of peoples' time.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
As a marketer I can tell you that we have been doing this in one way or the other for the last 50 years or so ... the only thing interesting here is that they're doing it with more advanced algorithms. This is stuff we had in the basic course of consumer behavior. The only real difference is that today you OFTEN do these studies in person instead of having computers to do it for you. Results and findings will most probably be the same from this as it is from regular observation studies.
Besides, when doing observation studies the point is not to disturb consumers so they are usually done from a surveillance room or such to monitor consumers movements. Marketers are very seldom interested in individual interactions but when consumers do stand out from the norm it's good to have the possibility to interact with said consumer.
I see this as a possible solution for very large shopping centers and their likes but I don't think there's anything special about this thing in particular.
HAL9000: Dave since your last visit your heat signature says you are worried, and your are traveling to the birth control isle... are you buying a pregnancy test again ?
How is this different from hiring low-paid staff to log traffic and follow suspicious looking people? And looking at checkout sales summaries is not enough - some places might want to know simply how many people walk in/out. Or maybe identify locations in a store where people look for an item but don't actually pick up something to buy - this could mean insufficient product choice or low inventory. I'm sure software hooked into already existent cameras is more efficient than minimum wage patrol staff who will usually get most everything wrong.
Considering the number of times I go into a store to where I think the product I want should be, only to find it doesn't exist (empty shelves), not in my size (I'm not a hippo), or ugly color (brown is not a fashion statement), and repeat this month after month, I can assure you retailers don't care about their customers.
If they did, they would see people like me leaving empty handed and make changes. The fact that I go into the same stores and get the same results (insanity I know), shows no matter how technical people want to get, it all comes down to a human problem.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Stay home. Buy online.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Retailers have been doing this for years as an extension of counting traffic in and out of the store (to calculate conversion rate) following customers by heat signature through the inside of the store can show you where your visual merchandising is not having enough of an impact. Sure, there could be some limited room for abuse, but without tying identity into those heat signatures somehow, all we know is *someone* took a certain path through the store - We don't know *who* that is. In any case, this data is examined in the aggregate traffic patters it produces as examining the behavior of individuals is not valuable marketing information.
I think this story illustrates that the RFID is completely unnecessary.
True story: a local tv news station was busy showing off their latest scare-piece on RFID technology some months ago. The anchor phonetically pronounced it "ar-fid". *head-shake*
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
Online stores have been doing it all along and many stores track customer habits using discount cards. It was only a matter of time until technology caught up to track in store behavior.
"Greater loss of privacy" sounds like "almost pregnant" or "greater loss of virginity"
and they have no power anymore in the western (or eastern!) countries.
Oh, cry my a river. You don't want to be on camera in a business? Don't shop at that business! How hard is that?
I don't respond to AC's.
The book "Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy" by Martin Lindstrom explains in great detail the (crazy) lengths companies/stores go to gleam as much - normally private - information on shoppers as possible. Its very readable, quite frightening (the bits about loyalty cards and credit cards especially), and written by someone who comes from the marketing/behavioral study field, and seems keen on fully exposing the shady practices of the industry to average readers. Its available from Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Brandwashed-Tricks-Companies-Manipulate-Persuade/dp/0385531737 and other book sellers.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
1. Husband spends time waiting for wife to finish shopping.
2. Glowing predictions of through the roof sales are not met the following month.
3. Programmer out of a job.
This is only useful to track a customer's flow through a store to produce a more efficient layout. Sure this might increase sales, but you can't tell what and why they are purchasing what they do.
>> "ar-fid"
I think that's a new dog tracking technology, isn't it?
It may confirm that I just ate at Taco Bell.
He may have gotten his start in the public realm, but he's sure gone private these days.
Of course, that doesn't mean that this sort of technology won't be used for other purposes eventually. Since we already have thought crime, the next step will be to wire these things us to cameras on the street.
Yeah, it sounds tin foil hat to me too - or would, if I hadn't experienced the changes over the last few decades.
Check your premises.
Here. And the data is already in numerical form.
Am I the only one that finds it funny that a person posting info about a book describing how companies collect personal information and influence people posted a link to Amazon of all places....? That's like going to Wal-Mart to buy a copy of "Nickel and Dimed".
I don't respond to AC's.
Well, considering how hard they are pushing for RFID to be built into every phone as a form of contactless payment (also gets rid of cash, which they love as an idea), we'll be pretty much there in a few years. A mobile phone has become so much part of modern life that many people will still use them, no matter what tracking you stick into them.
Wouldn't surprise me if in a few years they can track everyone with a mobile phone via rfid, and perhaps even get to read their bank balance to see how good a potential customer they could be...
Haven't they been doing this for years? Path Intelligence's patent application for the system that tracks cell phones in shopping centers cites this kind of thing as prior art...
This submission reads more like a PR guy shilling his stuff than news for nerds. There are a bunch of companies that have had this capability for some time, from very large networking and video folks down to startups. Not sure this is noteworthy.
"Would you, could you, with a goat?" Dr Seuss
Anyone know if there is a list of the stores that implement this or plan to so those of us who don't wish to be tracked and don't trust their "we totally won't abuse this and care about your privacy" lies can vote with our wallets?
You're complaining that he pronounced the acronym? That's a pretty common thing in English, at least in the last few decades.
Unless you say L-A-S-E-R, N-A-T-O, A-I-D-S and S-C-U-B-A, among others--and though I don't know you, let me say I officially doubt it--then you're really just judging somebody over his decision on where to draw the line between acronyms that should be pronounced and those that should be spelled out. Frankly I have no problem with pronouncing any acronym that pronounces smoothly. (Yes, Slashdotters, I typically pronounce "SQL" -- run in abject horror!)
Yup, walk into a store, your projected purchasing power (not to mention history) is overlaid on all sales and security associates glasses so they all know with just a glance if you're a customer who likes sales help, knows what they're after, just browsing, or looking for five-finger discounts.
Same thing will occur in school. Teachers and administration will get a quick graphical label of what kind of student you are.
I drank what? -- Socrates
technology still won't stop me from cropdusting!
Ooh, dating/meat-market glasses; those'll go over well. Folks good for buying an attractive person a drink will be flagged, tramp stamps will show up on people's foreheads, etc.
I drank what? -- Socrates
I read the responses so far and none mentioned probably the biggest analytical factor, minimizing labor costs (in form of salespeople / managers) while retaining maximum sales, hard as it is to believe for those that see very little sales help when needed.
Chains have been analyzing store traffic for a number of years with a combination of movement detectors and / or surveillance cameras. Shoppertrak was a major vendor. I wrote an app system for a large retailer correlating Shoppertrak customer counts, cash register sales, and labor minute by minute. They care about average sales and sales / time period and staffing levels to accomplish it. There's no personal particulars involved. They just want to cut sales staff to bare bone which can still support sales without it falling off.
The data can be used for good as well, justifying changes to convert traffic to sales, be that better staffing, changes in product placement, and any number of things. It's mostly to cut sales labor costs though AFAICT.
It's not as though tramp stamps are hard to spot. They're usually displayed. Inadvertently but displayed none the less.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
(Yes, Slashdotters, I typically pronounce "SQL" -- run in abject horror!)
How? Do you pronounce it more like skill, squeal or skull? The lack of vowels has me at a loss.
You're complaining that he pronounced the acronym? That's a pretty common thing in English, at least in the last few decades.
Unless you say L-A-S-E-R, N-A-T-O, A-I-D-S and S-C-U-B-A, among others--and though I don't know you, let me say I officially doubt it--then you're really just judging somebody over his decision on where to draw the line between acronyms that should be pronounced and those that should be spelled out. Frankly I have no problem with pronouncing any acronym that pronounces smoothly. (Yes, Slashdotters, I typically pronounce "SQL" -- run in abject horror!)
RFID is an initialism, not an acronym.
Just like it's spelled, "SQL."
Check out the difference between an acronym and an initialism. Do you also say "YOO-suh" (USA) or "SEE-oh" (CEO)? The examples you gave are easily (and obviously) pronounced, and most style guides will say that you can spell them with lower case letters.
I've got an aunt who used to work in sales for Oracle. She also pronounced "SQL", which baffled me, because I thought the "sequel" pronunciation was reserved for the Microsoft product. And yes, I shall now run in abject horror.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
it's not WHEN but WHY.
if you want to observe shopping habits, including heat maps of areas of the store that people stop at, why use a camera (and threaten people's privacy), when you can use low-tech radar or even pressure sensors scattered under the carpet?
Like a movie, sequel.
(Yes, Slashdotters, I typically pronounce "SQL" -- run in abject horror!)
How? Do you pronounce it more like skill, squeal or skull? The lack of vowels has me at a loss.
For reasons I don't understand, the only pronunciation I've ever heard is Sequel.
why track by RFID when in the future, we'll likely be tracked by DNA alone. It's coming... believe me...
This is nothing new. Point Grey Research in Canada has had this tech for years, since 2001 I think. Requires a $700 camera but the software to make the heat maps (directionality can be done too) is free.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWT5ZJG7CRg
http://www.lighthausvci.com/
Lighthaus does this too. Go by a major sports team/shoe store in your local mall and you'll see an IP camera above the main door pointed straight down. The computer watches which angle you enter the store at, what display you head toward and how long you linger at the entrance. The info isn't even seen by the store manager, it goes right to corporate.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Relevant.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
The anchor phonetically pronounced it "ar-fid". *head-shake*
Here in Taiwan, you can frequently hear the average person (or news anchor!) pronounce "app" as A-P-P. It irks me no end.
I pronounce "USA" the same as I do "Uma". In doing so, I haven't confused anyone yet: "Oh look, it's made in ooh-suh!"
I also got sick of saying V-O-I-P, so I pronounce that too. Along with SAN, NAS, and a bunch of other things. The database hackers I know personally all pronounce SQL as "sequel," but it might be a regional thing.
"ar-fid" isn't a bad pronunciation. Time will tell if it catches on.
Kid-proof tablet..
Geez, modded down from 1 to 0 for "over-rated?" Apparently we need a moderating choice of "-1 Not as funny as poster thought!" Or, maybe just "-1 Not Funny At All." Boy, am I bummed out!
I might be just guessing here but the use of this technology might be a bit overrated. Customers are not sheep and they are not that easily tricked into buying something just because it is placed on a specific shelf. The shops know what they sold, where they had that thing placed and they can even identify specific customers and their bought goods because now everybody pays electronically - so really, what kind of a big revolution this surveillance can bring to the shop owner?
In other news, businesses come up with yet another way to A) invade your privacy, B) shove unwanted shit products in your face, and C) feel entitled to every dollar in your pocket.
Fuck big business, and fuck corporate America. It's time for a change.
Its pronounced Throat Warbler Mangrove.
Don't blame me, I voted for Cthulhu.
Arrr Fido!