QMIC Reveals its “Falcon-I” AI Platform to Enable Smart Spaces
Monday, March 28:
In a press conference held in its offices at the Qatar Science & Technology Park on Monday March 28th, the Qatar Mobility Innovations Center (QMIC) revealed its latest major innovative platform “Falcon-I” which uses AI and IoT to deliver automated intelligence to help solve problems across different application domains. During the press conference, QMIC provided a quick insight about the platform, currently supported applications, its benefits and value, and a brief overview of how it works.
“Falcon-I” is an intelligent platform for realizing smart spaces, which can be parks, schools, campuses, road intersections, highways, and others. The platform utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) and computer vision to provide continuous monitoring and automated actions and alerts to optimize business operations, enhance customer experience, and deliver new services. “Falcon-I” can utilize any video feed (such as drones, CCTV networks, or others) as sources of data, or even use its own dedicated network of cameras if needed. The data collected is then processed and analyzed by the AI-enabled platform to produce specialized smart applications that can be used easily by targeted customers.
Given the widespread deployment of cameras across multiple industry domains whether in cities or within enterprises or campuses, “Falcon-I” home-grown technology platform and associated intelligence can be used to support the implementation of many smart solutions and applications.
As a first step and based on the interest demonstrated by key stakeholders in Qatar, “Falcon-I” platform has been used to deliver two main applications: Smart Intersections, and Parking Operations while other applications are at different stages of development. The platform was used in partnership with key national partners to optimize the mobility operations in support of the Arab Cup tournament in late 2021.
- Smart Intersections:
Road operators can use “Falcon-I” to efficiently manage mobility operations at road intersections. Under this module, “Falcon-I” has different solutions for a number of operational issues which include:
- Real Time Queue Length Monitoring:
Using AI to detect and quantify traffic pile-ups at and around road intersections. This smart application provides road operators valuable insights into the traffic conditions at intersections in order for them to make fast and best decisions to improve traffic flow and reduce congestions
- Yellow Box Monitoring
Another issue that contributes to traffic jams around road intersections is the occurrence of incidents inside the intersection, aka Yellow Box. This could be a broken-down vehicle, a stopped vehicle, or any kind of incident which could result in traffic pile-ups. Falcon-I intelligently and timely detects such incidents and alerts the road operator for taking the suitable action to remedy the situation.
- Smart Parking Monitoring:
During mega events, one of the most important ways to ensure a smooth spectator experience is to efficiently manage the parking experience. To properly manage mobility operations around sport venues, “Falcon-I” Parking Monitoring System was developed and deployed to provide real time and accurate info about parking occupancy levels and availability trends across many large outdoor parking lots set up to accommodate thousands of cars. Based on a real deployment in support of the Arab Cup event, this intelligent parking system provided the organizers with a comprehensive real time view about parking status, and allowed them to direct flow of vehicles into the proper lot or to open new lots.
Dr. Adnan Abu-Dayya, QMIC CEO & Executive Director, commented: “we are excited to introduce our latest and one of our most promising innovation platforms which has already proven its value and impact during the early market introduction late last year. Falcon-I is a scalable video analytics platform that can fully utilize our extensive technology expertise and product operational knowledge in IoT, AI, and data management. Realizing smart spaces in different application domains is a major step towards realizing smart and safe living. We look forward to continue working with existing and new partners to support all existing projects in Qatar in 2022 and beyond.”
Many other smart applications under “Falcon-I” will be ready for initial market deployment in the coming few weeks and months, such as Pedestrian crossing spaces, which can serve an important role in crowd management for mega events. Moreover, the agility and versatility of this platform, its ability to deploy intelligence at the edge or in the cloud, and its ability to integrate with existing camera data infrastructure will significantly broaden the addressable market of Falcon-I. This characteristic make “Falcon-I” a strong candidate for potential regional expansion beyond Qatar.
Dr. Hamid Menouar, Lead Technology Manager of Falcon-I said, “We are witnessing the start of the era of automation, where resources and assets will be managed with the finest optimization. AI will play an important role in realizing this, by replacing some of the manual steps in the operation process and eliminating the unnecessary operation and decision mistakes. Our newest technology Falcon-I, enabled with an advanced AI model and flexible smart applications, can make any space smart and ready for the automation of the both the monitoring and actions.
Falcon-I can run on any video stream, making it an ideal cost-effective solution to augment legacy CCTV infrastructures with intelligence. We will continue developing the solution further, to support more application domains, and help our partners optimize their operations”