Canary cameras will get AI-based Person Detection feature next year

Canary has revealed a new feature for its security cameras: "Person Detection." The new ability enables the camera to detect when a person is in the picture, helping device owners better understand the context behind their motion alerts. The feature is most important for pet owners who receive frequent motion alerts due to a cat or dog moving through the room. With Person Detection, you'll know when a human is behind the movements.

Home security cameras have grown in popularity, replacing the commercial security systems of old with modern, WiFI-connected devices that instantly alert residents to a potential problem. With these cameras come a variety of intelligent features; some cameras condense a day's footage down to a short video containing all of the day's motion alerts, for example.

Others let users isolate a specific area of a room or property for motion alerts, allowing the camera to ignore any movements that happen outside of that specific region. Canary's cameras are the latest in the pipeline for more intelligent functionality (joining its existing smart features, that is). Called Person Detection, the feature sends a "person detected" alert when an actual human causes movements rather than something else.

The feature is arriving for all Canary and Canary Flex devices, the company says. When one of these cameras detects a human, the camera owner will receive a prompt reading, "There's a person at Location," followed by the name of the camera that detected it: "living room" or something like that. Though Person Detection won't arrive to customers until early next year, Canary says the feature is in production testing and will be offered for free.

Artificial intelligence is powering this new feature, which is learning to identify humans visually. Person Detection won't eliminate general motion detection; in cases where something other than a human is caught on camera, a general "motion detected" alert will be sent out. However, users will have customization options including the ability to only get Person Detection alerts, putting those annoying pet-based motion alerts to rest.

SOURCE: Canary Blog