Future Worlds is an on-campus startup incubator and platform: championing the innovative commercial opportunities being developed by researchers and students at the University of Southampton.
The latest Future Worlds startup and current incubator residents, Jaime Lomeli and Daniel Martinho-Corbishley are building on advances from PhDs in computer vision and biometric identification at Southampton’s world-leading Department of Electronics and Computer Science through ambitious startup Aura Vision Labs.
The technology analyses video footage to track people in real-time without relying on visible faces. From any camera, the technology can detect the gender, age and ethnicity of every person in a crowd. Online businesses benefit from rich data on their customers’ activities, however traditional brick and mortar retailers find it very difficult to generate the same information. UK supermarket chains spend an estimated half a billion pounds every year tracking consumer spending through loyalty cards. These schemes have until now been the primary solution for stores to approach this challenge but their effectiveness is limited by the necessary sign-up processes and their declining popularity means many customer purchases are not being tracked.
As Aura Vision Labs develops, there is potential for the technology to be applied further to other applications. The Aura Vision Labs team plans to use their technology to simultaneously track people and cars from CCTV footage, helping city operators identify atypical congestion and promote walking as part of a healthy lifestyle.
To find out more, visit the Future Worlds Website.
