CAM-73

Liquid spill on the floor

A shiny puddle of liquid on the floor of a supermarket aisle, right in front of the chiller cabinet. A shopper is coming up the other end of the aisle pushing a shopping cart and hasn’t seen it yet.

CAM-73 · AISLE 7 · SLIP HAZARD

What IRIS understands

What it recognizes in this scene

spilt liquid
shopper coming closer
shopping shopping cart
aisle

The rule

You decide once. IRIS applies it always.

a patch appears on the floor that was not there before and stays put

Then

alert the duty manager with the camera and the aisle
open the video from the moment it was spilt
raise the alert to urgent if customers are walking toward it

The instruction that set it up«Tell me the moment something is spilt on the floor, in any aisle, and above all if someone is walking toward it.»

What changes

What changes for whoever runs the store

Two things happen here at once, and the second one happens far more often than the first. Someone can slip and fall, which is the serious one. And everybody who walks past while the puddle is still there sees a dirty store, which is what actually happens every single day. The duty manager can’t be in eight aisles at once, and today he finds out because a customer tells him or because someone has already fallen. With IRIS he knows while the puddle is on the floor, with the aisle, and he sends someone with a mop before half the afternoon has gone by.

What people usually ask

Can it tell a spill from a shadow or from a floor that has just been mopped?

That’s exactly what has to be tuned in each store. A shadow moves with the light and with the people; a spill stays put and has an edge that doesn’t change. A freshly mopped floor is the case that confuses it most, because it shines the same way, which is why the rule is tested in the actual store, with its own floor and its own lighting, before it is signed off. And when an alert does fire needlessly, the manager dismisses it in two seconds, because the alert arrives with the picture attached.

Is it any use if someone later makes a claim over a fall?

It’s useful because you have the video and the timestamps. The record shows when the spill appeared, when the alert fired and when it was cleaned up, with the footage for all three moments. What that’s worth in a claim is for whoever handles the case to say, not us: what IRIS does is spare the store from reconstructing it from memory three weeks later.

Does it work for other things on the floor, like a fallen box?

Yes, it’s the same kind of rule: something appears on the floor where there was nothing and stays put. A fallen box, a hanger, a pallet left in the middle of the aisle. Each store picks what matters to it and what doesn’t; the alert arrives the same way, with the camera and the aisle.

Other cameras

Demo · IRIS at work

A camera looks. IRIS understands what it sees.

An extract of the real screen, no voice-over and hands-free. Each round poses another situation. What sits behind it is a good deal bigger than what you see.