With 15,000 visitors per day, and a watch list of about 3,000 people, the casino faced an impossible task to recognise persons of interest in real time. Surveillance staff manually detected only 5–7 known persons per week and was looking for an automated face recognition system to support two separate requirements:
- Detecting voluntarily excluded patrons to promote responsible gambling and to avoid compliance fines associated with allowing these people to play
- Detecting banned persons or people on the lookout list for loss prevention and security.
Fully managed services
At peak times, the system sees 20 persons per second in front of all cameras
Cognitec offers the Face VACS-VideoScan Enterprise Solution as a fully managed service that allows the casino to benefit from the technology at affordable cost and with low implementation effort. The system for this casino includes the software, installed on three redundant servers, and 29 Cognitec C5 cameras at various entrances and in walkways.
Some cameras have been installed to blend into the wall design, and not disrupt the overall casino decorum. At peak times, the system sees 20 persons per second in front of all cameras. The software stores the appearances of all persons for 30 days, collecting an average of 1 million faces. After this time window, all images, videos and biometric templates are deleted.
Taking optimal photos with a hand-held camera
When the surveillance team receives an alert, they verify the facial match, and send the person details to the database administrator. The security team receives the confirmed alert on a mobile device to discreetly find and approach the person on the floor.
For new enrolments, staff have been instructed on taking optimal photos with a hand-held camera
For new enrolments, staff have been instructed on taking optimal photos with a hand-held camera. The technology has been optimised to generate a high rate of true alerts while generating the lowest possible count of false alerts. The surveillance team evaluates the image pairs in an alert within seconds, and discards the alerts with questionable match results.
Face recognition services
The system currently generates up to 30 correct alerts per day. Self-excluded problem gamblers are now detected at a much higher rate, resulting in a significant reduction in fine payments compared to the past with traditional detection methods. Observing such reliable system performance has convinced the client to add more cameras to the system and implement the technology at additional locations.
The casino also considers to use the technology for underage detection and VIP recognition. Furthermore, the casino has the option to report visitor demographics and statistics that help planning for staff resources and casino capacities. While Cognitec continues to provide reliable, fully-managed face recognition services, the casino continuously reaps the benefits: a secure environment for customers and staff, a profitable business, and support from the community.
