CIO Bulletin

C2RO— Helping Businesses Safely Understand Human Behaviour in the Physical World

We are heading to a future where virtually everything is under the constant surveillance of a digital eye. The information that we get from instruments such as video cameras and security infrastructure is not limited by human analysis.

Computer vision is a field of AI that trains computers to understand and analyze the visual world. C2RO’s AI-based real-time video analytics software solution transforms human behaviour into actionable data that help companies make better decisions that improve their operations as a whole.

Ensuring the Best Customer Experience at Every Touchpoint and Maximizing ROI While Still Maintaining Data Privacy

Acting within the boundaries of the most stringent data privacy laws is challenging and is precisely where C2RO’s expertise comes into play. C2RO has become recognized as the most trusted Privacy-Aware AI-powered video analytics company in the world. It has pioneered a new class of ‘non-biometric’ video analytics systems for journey analysis and socio-demographic classification, using proprietary edge-cloud AI and computer vision technologies.

ENTERA^™, C2RO’s flagship product, is the most advanced GDPR-Compliant Video Analytics Platform in the industry. It has been deployed globally at Tier-1 customer sites in retail, malls, smart city and transportation, enterprise and commercial real estate, public safety and security, Industry 4.0, AIoT, and more.

In conversation with Riccardo Badalone, CEO of C2RO

Tell us about C2RO™.

C2RO^™ is all about transforming human behaviour and attributes into data for businesses. We have a vertically integrated, 360-degree analysis platform that understands everything about where people go, their demographic class, objects, and places they engage, and right down to what they touch and grab. We like to say what, where, when, and why… but never who.

Q. What is unique about C2RO’s technology and, how are you helping drive the digital transformation?

The unique thing about what we are doing, besides the vertical integration around the capabilities, is the fact that we developed an AI stack that is fully non-bio-metric and real-time, which means that we never use personal data or store images to extract the information for our customers. We produce fully anonymized data so we can guarantee that there is no personal information captured or stored in our system, preserving the data privacy rights of individuals at all times.

Additionally, C2RO’s biometric-free solutions are built for the scale and reuse of existing security cameras, which is a massive advantage for our customers that have already made significant infrastructure investments. We are recognized by some of the biggest players in the industry for developing business analysis systems that extract incredibly valuable insights never before available with other technologies, and we have had a huge positive impact on our customers’ business operations overall. In many cases, we are breaking new ground with their teams, exploring data analysis of aspects of their business that they were never able to quantify and optimize in the past.

Q. Can you tell us about ENTERA^™ and how C2RO’s AI Video Analytics solutions are transforming today’s data-driven world?

ENTERA^™ serves three key industries: Retail, Transportation, Smart Cities, and Manufacturing.

In Transportation and Smart Cities, the system can generate accurate and detailed information about the movement of passengers, volume, and density of people in specific platform and corridor areas, and critical baseline metrics that can be fed into simulators for planning services and expansion initiatives. It can help identify if services are lacking and help cities and municipalities do better, data-driven, city planning and activate resting areas, service areas, entertainment areas, etc. where their visitors need them the most.
In Retail, grocery retailers, for example, the system can help decrease waiting time at the queues, improve the flow of the store for faster browsing, and it can help buyers to have access to better promotions tailored to their needs. Most critically, it can collect precious attribution data that serves as a benchmark for return on advertising spending and marketing campaigns.
In Manufacturing, it can analyze the production flow and optimize the factory layout. It can help increase productivity, reduce downtime, foresee potential interruptions, alert staff in real-time, and ensure staff safety at the manufacturing facility.

Q. Since C2RO’s ENTERA^™ is predominantly dependent on surveillance cameras to acquire data and monitor the areas of implementation, how is the product biometric-free?

ENTERA^™ is the world’s ONLY patented biometric-free, 100% FACELESS AI^™ platform that guarantees data privacy regulation compliance with European Privacy Commission acceptance in several EU countries. Patent pending technology ensures that all data and statistics gathered by the system are explicitly not derived from uniquely identifying biometric elements (visitors’ faces, the way a person walks, etc.) This guarantees that personal information is NEVER used in the collection of data and statistics at the site of analysis. This is true for all data generated by the system, including demographics and camera-to-camera reconnection. It allows the system to be safely audited at scale, and if necessary, allows for the training of models using on-site data to achieve guaranteed levels of accuracy.

Q. Can you share a success story that stands out?

Our client, one of the biggest metro systems in North America, was frustrated because their simulations, which were generated using expensive human movement analysis systems, were not accurate and did not allow them to model and implement solutions to congestion and dangerous levels of density at peak rush hours.

ENTERA^™ offered immediate and highly accurate data that could be used to assess specific metrics:

Travel Time of the Public as a Function of Density
Fluidity in Corridors and Stairwells
Exact Volume of Customers Flowing on Escalators
Density on Each Platform and Embark/Debark Times
Waiting Time at Each Platform

With ENTERA^™, they improved the riders traveling time, uncovered system capacity needs for long-term planning, and could save close to $3M/year in dated simulation technology.

Enabling AI-powered video analytics to impact the market

Riccardo Badalone, is the CEO of C2RO. He is also a Member of the AIoT Canada Board of Directors. Riccardo is a passionate and driven tech entrepreneur. For the last 20 years, he has led multi-disciplinary teams and built category-defining companies from the ground up.

Riccardo is an active member of the Montreal Startup Ecosystem. As part of MentorConnect Montreal, Riccardo is helping companies by providing strategic guidance to improve culture and productivity and accelerate success.