CAM-590

Two thousand four hundred pass, two hundred and sixty stop

The same boarding concourse, now looking at the unit on the right: a convenience store open to the walkway, with no door and its shelves facing the flow. In front of it the steady stream of people heading for the gates crosses, and one passenger walks right along the storefront looking at the goods without stopping. IRIS counts how many people walk past and how many stop in the strip of floor next to the unit, and how long they stay. It doesn’t know whether they went in and doesn’t know whether they bought anything: the operator’s register says that.

CAM-590 · 1 LINE · 1 ZONE · 24 h

What IRIS understands

What it recognizes in this scene

storefront, open to the concourse
shelves facing the walkway
concourse flow toward the gates
passengers crossing without looking
passenger looking at the storefront as he passes
escalator at the side
seats on the opposite side
sign splitting toward gates and food

What this camera gives back

Nobody gets an alert here. Here you get numbers.

2 400 / hPeople walking past
260 / hPeople stopping to look
41 sAverage time stopped in front
4 min 20 sLongest stop of the day
17:00 – 19:00Busiest slot for foot traffic
18:05Last updated

The figures on this screen are an example from the illustration, not any client’s measurement.

How the counting works

Counting isn’t something you ask for. You draw a line.

There’s a line drawn across the axis of the concourse: whoever crosses it has walked past the unit. And there’s a zone painted over the strip of floor next to the storefront: whoever enters it and stays still for a few seconds is someone who has stopped to look. The line and the zone are drawn once on the image and there they stay, so a Tuesday in January and a Saturday in August really can be compared. And the limit is written next to the figure: passing and stopping are measured; going in and buying aren’t.

line across the axis of the concourse · Counting line
zone next to the storefront · Dwell zone

And also, one rule

You decide once. IRIS applies it always.

foot traffic past the unit rises and the number stopping does not

Duringit stays that way for two hours running

Then

alert whoever runs the retail side, with the time slot and both curves
save the comparison with the same slot the week before
leave the figure for the next review of the unit’s rent

The instruction that set it up«Tell me if foot traffic past the unit rises for two hours running and the number of people stopping does not rise with it.»

What changes

What changes for operations, for the passenger and for maintenance

In an airport, retail pays a big share of the bill, and today a unit’s rent is negotiated on an estimate of how many people walk past. Measured, that conversation changes: you know how many people pass per hour, how many stop, for how long and in which slot. And it serves what really matters to both sides: if foot traffic rises and the number stopping doesn’t rise with it, the problem isn’t the location, it’s the storefront; and if foot traffic falls, the problem belongs to the concourse and the airport has to fix it.

What people usually ask

Does IRIS know how many people went into the store and bought something?

No, and it matters to say it plainly. IRIS measures two things: how many people walk past and how many stop in front of the storefront. Whether that person went in and whether they bought anything is known by the operator from their own register data, not by the camera. Cross-referencing the two is useful and is done every day, but each side brings the part it has. Promising conversion from video would be selling something that doesn’t exist.

Are the customers who stop identified?

No. Bodies crossing a line and bodies standing still inside a zone are counted. There are no faces, no names and no record of anybody: the data is a number per hour, not a list of people. An airport that wants to know whether its retail works does not need to know who anybody is, and this framing is set up precisely for that.

Other cameras

See it for yourself

No extra alarms here. Just what needs looking at.

Not a recorded video, not an explanatory drawing: a summary of the real screen, with a different case every time it starts. There’s a lot more behind it.