sciencetech-blog

comments

A new app hopes to tell shopkeepers exactly how popular their store is - by watching from nearby apartment windows.

Placemeter uses smartphones mounted in windows to monitor stores - paying homeowners upto $50 a month.

Using the smartphone's video camera, the software can then analyse video and work out how many shoppers there are - and exactly where they go.

Scroll down for video 

The app uses an algorithm to spot shoppers, and can count how many people walk into stores 

'Placemeter uses a proprietary algorithm to automatically extract measurable data from a live video streamm,' the firm says. 

It stresses it cannot identify people. 

'Without identifying individual characteristics, our computer vision technology can count the number of people walking into a given venue and calculate how heavy traffic is on a stretch of street.

'Placemeter will never identify or track individuals. We will only use our technology to count people.'

The technology was developed after founders Alex Winter and fellow partner Florent Peyre became annoyed at queuing for Shake Shack burgers, and decided to try and write an algorithm to work out how long the queue would take.  

'Placemeter was created to give people the power of knowing what a place is like before they get there,' the firm says.

'We collect and serve up-to-the-minute information like how crowded a place is, how long the wait is, and whether it will get more or less crowded in the next hour. 

Placemeter says it does not store any of the video feed it receives, nor does its analysis involve facial recognition. 

It also uses a cobination of public streams and its own streams.

'Placemeter is a real-time, open platform that uses sensors implemented by the community and public video feeds to quantify and index the physical world.' 

Security experts, however, are concerned about the amount of video feed and data accessible by a private company.

Ryan Kalember, chief product officer of WatchDox, told The Guardian: 'This is different from CCTV in London because at least law enforcement who have access to it are operating under a series of restrictions to prevent it from being abused. 

The app can even analyse cars that pass, telling city planners how many are speeding

'[In the case of Placemeter] both hackers and malicious insiders who gain access to the footage could use it to compromise the privacy of all sorts of people they wanted to stalk or surveil in the physical world.'