Who sees the child who has fallen at the far end of the playground?
In a school, data identifies nobody. It is there so an adult gets there sooner.
We show thirteen cameras here: twelve that raise an alert when something is under way and one that alerts nobody, it just measures. And first of all, because it is the first thing anybody thinks of on hearing «cameras» and «school»: IRIS recognises no child. It does not know who anybody is, it keeps no face and it labels nobody. It looks at common areas — the playground, the entrances, the shared corridors and the street outside the gate — and it raises an alert so an adult from the school walks over. There is no camera in the toilets or the changing rooms.
Without IRIS this is a playground with two teachers for three hundred children.
AI-generated image
What is at stake in a school
Two teachers for three hundred children at break time is nobody's failing: it is arithmetic. Half an hour, a playground with corners you cannot see from where you stand, and three hundred children all moving at once. When a child falls behind the sports hall and does not get up, what decides how that ends is not the camera that recorded it: it is how long an adult takes to get there. It can be ten seconds or it can be ten minutes, and nobody sees that difference until afterwards.
IRIS watches for you. It analyses at once every camera the school already has in its common areas and only interrupts when a rule the school itself wrote is met: a child on the ground who does not get up, a playground with no adult in it, a blocked emergency exit, somebody coming through the gate outside the hours the school set. The alert arrives with the camera, the time and the video. And it arrives while it is happening, to the person who can walk out there.
And where there is nothing to alert about, IRIS measures. How many people are still inside each space if the building has to be evacuated. That is not set up by talking, it is set up by drawing: a line cannot be described in a sentence, it has to be drawn on the image. That is why the figure comes out the same every day and can be audited. And for people counting our system is certified by the Spanish Metrology Centre: the figure has been verified by an independent third party, not by us. It is worth saying precisely: that certification covers people counting, not the whole product. And that figure says how many people are still in a space, never who they are.
And two things out loud, because they are the first things anybody thinks of on hearing «cameras» and «school». First: IRIS recognises no child. It does not recognise faces, it does not compare them against any database, it does not store who anybody is, it does not follow any minor and it keeps no file on anybody. It does not read number plates either. And there is no camera in the toilets or the changing rooms: IRIS looks at the playground, the entrances, the shared corridors and the street outside the gate. Second: IRIS labels no child. It does not say who bullies, who is difficult, who is sad or who has a problem; it does not diagnose and it does not predict. It detects situations that are visible and can be checked. And it opens and closes no door, it calls nobody of its own accord, it replaces no teacher on duty, it does not monitor the staff and it issues no fines. It raises an alert early, so a person from the school gets there.
The real scale
Thirteen cameras here. At break time there are two adults and half an hour.
This demonstration shows thirteen cameras because thirteen fit on a screen. A school does not fit. And here the axis is not the kilometres of a motorway or the shops in a chain: it is the metres of playground and the minutes of break time. Half an hour, everybody at once, and a single gate they all come out of when the bell rings. The adults out in the playground are separating children, tying shoelaces and looking at whoever is in front of them, which is exactly what they should be doing. Putting more people in front of more screens does not fix this either, and it would be absurd: whoever is on duty should be in the playground, not at a monitor. IRIS does not get tired and does not get distracted. It analyses every camera there is in the common areas, all day long, and only interrupts when a rule the school itself wrote is met.
Examples
These thirteen are only examples.
Twelve raise an alert when something is under way and one alerts nobody: it just measures. They come in five groups, and the first is the children, because in a school that comes first: the children, the playground and the building, the school gate, the street outside and measuring the school. They are not the thirteen things IRIS can do in a school; they are the ones that fit on a screen, and each school writes them in its own words. All of them happen in common areas: there is no camera in the toilets or the changing rooms. Open any of them and you will see the image as it is and then with what IRIS understands on top.
See it for yourself
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.
- You draw the line
- It counts by itself
- A number comes out
And now think about your school
Imagine knowing while it is happening, and not when somebody tells you the next day.
The child who has been on the ground behind the sports hall for four minutes and does not get up. The one who has spent the whole break alone, on the same bench. The closed ring that forms in the same corner at the same time every day. The child who has gone into the playground store room, where nobody should be alone. The shove that has turned into a fight by the basketball hoops. The playground full at mid-morning with no adult in it. The emergency exit that has had a trolley in front of it for half an hour. The adult who came through the gate at eleven, when the gate was supposed to be shut. The child who walks out of the gate alone in the middle of the morning. The one who crosses the road without looking while the line waits on the pavement. The car going far too fast down the school street right at home time. The two cars parked across the entrance, with the gate behind them. And how many people are still in each space if the building has to be evacuated.
All of that is happening in front of cameras the school already has up, in common areas, and right now nobody knows: there are two adults in the playground and three hundred children. IRIS watches all those cameras at once and says it while it is happening, to whoever can walk out there. None of those sentences says who anybody is or puts a label on any child: they say what is happening, where and since when. In front of cameras that already exist.
What gets asked in the meeting at the school
The ten questions that come up before anyone says yes.
Answered in the first line, without hedging and without promising that a system prevents a fight or an accident. IRIS raises an alert early; looking, weighing it up and deciding still belong to the school team.
Are you going to recognise our pupils?
No, we are not going to recognise any pupil, and this comes before anything else. IRIS does not recognise faces, does not compare them against any database, does not know who any child is, keeps no face, follows no minor and holds a file on nobody. It does not read number plates either: in a school that function is not switched on. And there are places with no camera: not in the toilets and not in the changing rooms. IRIS looks at common areas — the playground, the entrances, the shared corridors and the street outside the gate — which is where almost every school already has cameras today. What it sees is «there is a child on the ground on the back court and they have not got up for three minutes»: what is happening, where and since when. That is everything the alert contains, and that is the first thing you have to be able to show the staff, the parents' association and the families.
Does IRIS detect bullying?
No, IRIS does not detect bullying, and anyone telling you otherwise is not being straight with you. Bullying is a pattern a trained professional assesses, looking at many things that never happen in front of a camera. A camera sees something else: it sees a closed ring that forms in the same corner at the same time, or a child who has spent the whole break alone. That is a fact you can check, not a diagnosis. IRIS does not say who bullies, does not say who is difficult, does not say who is sad and puts a label on no child. It does not diagnose and it does not predict. What it does is show the school team where and when to look, with the video in front of them. What that means is decided by a trained person — the class teacher, the school counsellor, the team — and IRIS does not touch that part.
Does IRIS open doors or call anyone of its own accord?
No, IRIS opens no door and calls nobody of its own accord. It does not open or close the school gate, it sets off no siren, it alerts nobody outside the school and it takes no decision in place of a person. It does not replace the teacher on duty either: the playground is still watched by whoever watches it today, on the same rota and with the same judgement. It does not monitor the staff — it is not time-keeping, it is not clocking in and it appraises nobody — and it issues no fines to any car. All it does is raise an alert early, with the camera, the time and the video, so an adult from the school walks over. Who goes, what they do and what gets written down stays exactly as it is now.
How many alerts are we going to get in one break time?
You are going to get the alerts you decide on, because the rule is bounded: area, time of day and duration. A system that fires fifty alerts in one break is switched off within a week, and rightly so: when everything alerts, nothing does. That is why a rule is not «tell me if there is a child on the ground», which in a playground happens constantly and almost always because they are playing, but «tell me if there is a child on the ground on this court for more than two minutes», or «tell me if this area has had no adult in it for ten minutes between eleven and half past». By changing the area, the time window and the minimum duration, the same detector goes from sounding all the time to sounding when it really matters. And the rule is written by the school with its team and its counsellor, not by a supplier: how long is «a long time» and which corner matters is known by the people who are there every day. It is then tuned with what came out in the first two weeks.
What do we tell the staff, the parents' association and the families?
The staff, the parents' association and the families are told everything, and before anything is installed, not afterwards. You show them what is watched: the playground, the entrances, the shared corridors and the street outside the gate. And what is not watched: the toilets and the changing rooms, where there is no camera. You tell them in these words that there is no facial recognition, that there is no file on any minor and that IRIS labels no child. And you explain the camera that counts how many people are still in each space, because that is the one that raises a hand in any meeting: it is there to know how many people have yet to get out if the building has to be evacuated, and it is not taking the register, because it counts people and does not know who they are. The rest is not signed off by a salesperson of ours: the legal framing and the information given to families are signed by the school and its governing body, who are the ones answerable for it. A system like this only works if the staff and the families know exactly what it looks at and what it does not.
Does it work with the cameras we already have?
Yes, it works with the cameras you already have, and that is exactly the point: a school usually already has cameras at the gate, in the playground and in the corridors, and what is missing is not cameras, it is somebody to watch them. IRIS analyses the video signal those cameras are already producing. What does affect the result is where each one is mounted and what can be seen from there: a camera that covers the playground lengthways and from above gives far more than one placed so the whole gate fits in frame. Before promising anything we would rather look at your plans and a few real images and tell you which cameras this makes sense on and which it does not. Sometimes the answer is to move one camera two metres, and that is cheaper than buying anything.
Does the video leave the school?
The video leaves the school only if you want it to, and in a school the normal thing is that it does not. IRIS can run inside the school itself, on your own machine and with no internet connection: the images go nowhere and the analysis keeps working even if the line goes down. It can also run in our data centre or in the cloud if that suits you better, but that is your decision and not a condition of ours. Wherever it runs, an alert always keeps the same things: the camera, the time, the situation detected and the clip of video, and nothing else. No name, no class, no stored face, because IRIS neither has them nor asks for them.
Is the figure for how many people are still inside reliable?
The figure for how many people are still inside is reliable because it is not set up by talking, it is set up by drawing: you trace a line or an area over the image and count who crosses it and how many people are inside. A line cannot be described in a sentence; it has to be drawn. That is why the number is worked out the same way every day, can be repeated and can be audited. And on people counting you do not have to take our word for it: our system is certified by the Spanish Metrology Centre, an independent third party that has verified the figure is the right one. Said precisely: that certification covers people counting, not the whole product. And one more thing, because it matters: that number says how many people are still in a space and since when, so that in a drill or in a real evacuation you know where people have yet to get out. It does not say who anybody is and it is not taking the register.
And what about what IRIS does not see?
What IRIS does not see is real, and it is worth saying before anything is signed. A camera only understands what falls inside its frame: there is no camera in the toilets or the changing rooms, and whatever happens there IRIS does not see and will not see. It does not see behind a closed door either, nor in the corner a tree hides, nor outside the hours the school has decided it should watch. In poor light or with a dirty lens it sees worse. And some situations look very much alike: a pile of children throwing themselves on each other in play and a fight can be confused for a second, which is why an alert is always closed by a person looking at the video. And the whole sentence has to be said: IRIS prevents no fight and prevents no road accident. By the time IRIS sees it, it is already happening. What changes is how long it takes before an adult gets there. We are not going to sell you an infallible system, because it is not one. It is a system that watches, all day long, the playground nobody is watching right now.
How much does it cost?
It costs according to how many cameras are analysed, what each one is asked to do and where the video is processed. We do not publish a price list because it would not be honest: a playground with four cameras and two rules and a whole school with the gate, the corridors and the street are not the same project. What you can do is start small: the playground and the gate, the two or three rules that really matter there, and look at the alerts with your team before deciding anything. Write to us and we will go through it with your plans and your cameras in front of us.
Next step
Who sees the sales that never reach the till?
10 cases: 4 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.
Who is watching when the load swings over somebody?
11 cases: 9 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.
And the best part
Nobody was hired to stare at a screen.They were hired to know what to do.
Watching is what a machine does best; deciding is what only a person does. IRIS watches all four thousand at once and hands over only what calls for a decision.
Tell us your problem and we will say whether IRIS understands it, or not yet.
We reply the same working day.