CAM-541
The line isn’t moving and there are barely any free tables left
Saturday, twenty past two, the food court is full. At the first counter the queue doubles back and spills into the walkway: an eleven-minute wait. At the second it’s six minutes; at the third, two. The seating area is almost full, with six free tables out of eighty-four. People keep arriving up the escalator. Here IRIS asks nothing: there’s a line drawn at each counter and two zones over the floor. It counts who joins a queue, who gets to order and how many tables are left.
Turn on IRIS Vision
AI-generated image
What IRIS understands
What it recognizes in this scene
- line at the first counter
- line at the second counter
- line at the third counter
- occupied tables
- table in the foreground, taken
- one of the few free tables
- the escalator bringing more people in
- the coffee island
What this camera gives back
Nobody gets an alert here. Here you get numbers.
- 11 min+4 minLongest wait
- 48In the three lines
- 9 / minServed per minute
- 6 / 84Free tables
- 38 minAverage time at a table
- 14:20Updated
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.
Asking is for searching. Counting is for measuring. And they aren’t done the same way. Here there are three lines — one hard against each counter — and two zones: one over the floor where the queues form, one over the seating area. Anyone who enters the queue zone and leaves without crossing the line has walked off without ordering. A line can’t be described in a sentence: it has to be drawn, and that’s why the figure comes out the same today and in six months.
- line at the first counter · Counting line
- line at the second counter · Counting line
- line at the third counter · Counting line
- the floor where the three lines form · Dwell zone
- the seating area · Dwell zone
And also, one rule
You decide once. IRIS applies it always.
If
When the wait at a counter goes over eight minutes
Then
- tell the food court manager which unit it is and how long the wait is
- save the count for that time slot, counter by counter and table by table
- leave the day’s curve in the operations report
The instruction that set it up«Tell me if the wait at any unit goes over eight minutes or if there are fewer than ten free tables.»
What changes
What changes for operations, for asset management and for security
The operations director knows today what each unit took at the register, but not what walked off down the walkway. With the wait at every counter and the free tables per time slot, he decides where to open one more register and when to put more people on clearing tables. And the operator paying the rent sees, in numbers, why he loses sales at two thirty. Somebody who waits eleven minutes with a tray in hand doesn’t come back next Saturday.
What people usually ask
Can you tell how many people leave without ordering?
Yes. It’s a zone and a line: anybody who enters the queue zone and leaves without ever crossing the counter line has walked off without ordering. It’s a number, not an impression, and today nobody has it: the register only knows what was sold. With that figure per unit and per time slot, you decide where to open another register and when.
Does IRIS know what each customer ordered?
No. IRIS counts people and tables, not purchases, and it does not know who anybody is: it does not recognize faces or compare them with anything. What it gives is how many are waiting, how long, how many get to order and how many tables are free. What was sold is what the operator’s register knows. They are two different figures, and they read better side by side.
Is this for arguing with one of the food court operators?
It’s for talking with data. The operator sees the wait at his own counter and the free tables in his time slot; the landlord sees the whole court. Nobody argues over an impression. What IRIS doesn’t do is measure the people serving: it counts people in a line and occupied tables, not anybody’s performance, and it identifies nobody.
Other cameras
- CAM-535 · How many people come in through each door, and when
- CAM-536 · An empty hallway sixty feet from a packed wing
- CAM-537 · Before, during and after: what the campaign actually brought in
- CAM-538 · Eighteen hundred walk past and two hundred stop
- CAM-539 · The ground floor packed and the upper walkway deserted
- CAM-540 · How many get out of the car and which door they end up using
See it for yourself
Watch what happens. Then watch what IRIS does with it.
Not a recorded video and not a drawing: it’s a summary of the real tool, with a different case each time round. The whole tool doesn’t fit in a box.
- The rule gets built
- It goes to every camera
- Published, it watches alone
- And then it fires
Next step
Who watches an entire highway?
10 cases: 8 raise an alert when something happens and 2 only measure. You see each image as it is, and then with what IRIS understands on top.
Who watches a whole station at rush hour?
17 cases: 11 raise an alert when something happens and 6 only measure. You see each image as it is, and then with what IRIS understands on top.
And the best part
By the eighth hour of a shiftnobody watches the way they did in the first. That isn’t a flaw.
It’s being human. A camera has no eighth hour: at four in the morning it understands what it understood at noon, and it speaks up just the same.
Tell us your problem and we’ll say whether IRIS understands it, or not yet.
A person answers, the same working day.