Pinoy Engineering students invented an app for detecting criminal activities via CCTVs

A group of five  Computer Engineering students of the Technological Institute of the Philippines (TIP) – Quezon City created SulyApp.

Alerting CCTVs through AI

Real-time detection of crimes?

SulyApp is an application that monitors and alerts CCTV operators of unwanted activities in real-time. It makes use of artificial intelligence (AI) to read body movements usually associated with criminal assaults.

Once this app detects a person doing a suspicious pose or stance, it categorizes the scene as an emergency and immediately sounds an alarm, then sends out an email notification to the nearest police desk.

SulyApp is invented by Jarod Augustus Austria, Adrian Galit, Joaquin Tyrone Guevarra, Kathleen Jogno, and Franklin Nazareno from TIP. The university issued a statement,

SulyApp can be run anywhere in areas that have CCTVs – may it be in schools, homes, or small neighborhoods. Rather than relying on manpower and mere evidence retrieval, the app detects crimes as they happen, changing the way we do surveillance and permitting faster response time.

Furthermore, this innovation won third prize at the second "Hackathon" contest organized by the Philippine National Police - Information Technology Management Service (PNP-ITMS) held in October last year.

In an online interview, Guevarra shared that the concept was a product of brainstorming among the five of them after their thesis adviser urged them to join the contest. He also said that they had to depend on virtual means of collaboration since the pandemic made it impossible for them to meet face to face.

He and his five groupmates had to video call every day for a week for ideas to create the SulyApp. One of them, Austria, served as the app's main programmer and coded the system used. 

Austria said that the technology used in this app is MediaPipe, which utilizes post-estimation. Allegedly, MediaPipe predicts the person’s position, that’s why they used this to classify what the person is doing. 

Moreover, this technology is also said to be useful in other apps like workouts. MediaPipe is said to have the ability to count how many pushups a person has performed.

As of writing, the app can only detect punching so there's a lot of improvement. Guevarra said that he hopes that he and his groupmates can further work on the app's improvements after graduation. 

The group is currently focused on finishing the requirements for their final semester in TIP, such as their thesis defense.

Source: OneNews