Tokyo, April 5, 2021 - NEC Corporation (NEC; TSE: 6701) today announced the development of “On-Demand Action Detection," a technology that can easily detect target actions from live video footage and video archives by simply analyzing a few seconds of sample video that displays a target action.

This technology makes it possible to detect actions and movements of individuals who may require assistance and help, such as crouching or falling, in real time by analyzing live video streams, which can enable facility managers to promptly respond to an incident and take effective emergency measures.

With traditional technologies, in order to automatically detect a specific action from video footage, it is necessary to prepare a large amount of video that displays a target action and to have artificial intelligence (AI) learn from the footage. Since it takes time to train AI in this way, it has been difficult to immediately register and detect target actions. In addition, since there are a wide range of variations for each action, it has been difficult to define actions and to train AI to detect them.

Unlike existing video retrieval technologies, NEC's On-Demand Action Detection eliminates the need for preliminarily defining target actions and collecting large amounts of training data for AI. Also, since the new technology can detect similar actions regardless of a subject's orientation, there is no need to analyze multiple sample videos to detect a single action. This significantly reduces the burden on system operators and paves the way for more practical action detection services.

Going forward, NEC will proceed with trails of this technology, aiming to commercially launch applications that include video monitoring services and video content editing services.

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About NEC Corporation
NEC Corporation has established itself as a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies while promoting the brand statement of “Orchestrating a brighter world.” NEC enables businesses and communities to adapt to rapid changes taking place in both society and the market as it provides for the social values of safety, security, fairness and efficiency to promote a more sustainable world where everyone has the chance to reach their full potential. For more information, visit NEC at https://www.nec.com.