Discover CAM Scale-Up through Route Konnect
Mohamed Binesmael describes Route Konnect’s experience leading up to, and navigating the CAM scale-up journey.
Learn more about their specialty, the testing progress and the results.
Route Konnect and the CAM Scale-Up programme
Route Konnect, the Google Analytics of physical spaces.
Welsh start-up Route Konnect’s edge processing solution, ‘Road Konnect’, gathers information from cameras and utilises real-time sensor data to provide in-depth insights into movement within cities.
Route Konnect provides video analytics by gathering insights across multiple cameras, without using facial recognition. Similar to how Google Analytics provides information about how users navigate a website, Route Konnect offers insight into movement around physical spaces, such as road junctions.
The origins of Route Konnect began in 2016 when CEO Mohamed Binesmael, Chief Technical Officer Daniel Harborne and Software Engineer Matteo De Rosa discovered a mutual passion for autonomous vehicle racing. They had a vision centred around developing a self-racing, self-driving car, one that would require a camera to be installed to see which insights it would generate. Over time as their experience grew, they realised there were already thousands of cameras at their fingertips, so they pivoted towards using the existing infrastructure to develop software that could analyse traffic patterns. This became ‘Road Konnect’, which is designed to improve road efficiency, help reduce carbon emissions and provide valuable behavioural insights.
Mohamed states:
We aspire to be the number one smart city analytics provider. We want to anonymously analyse how we move across spaces, both in vehicles and on foot. Through that understanding we can help improve future city design and road space efficiency.”
What makes Route Konnect special?
It’s unique. There’s nothing on the market that works the same way as Route Konnect’s technology. Other competitors use multiple cameras to aggregate results as a heatmap, which fails to offer insight into an individual’s journey. In comparison, ‘Road Konnect’ can not only track someone’s journey across multiple cameras within the existing infrastructure, they have also developed a more robust algorithm that can follow a person’s movement, even when they are out of sight of a camera’s view. A key benefit is that it’s completely anonymous as it doesn’t employ facial recognition, which is increasingly subject to legal implications.
In contrast to facial recognition, ‘Road Konnect’ uses fuzzy descriptors, which need less information and can identify a moving person or object. It takes this information and uses it in conjunction with their algorithm to track and predict movement with up to 96% accuracy. This can be used to gain deeper insight into how someone interacts with a space. It can even be used to improve road efficiency through traffic management. Making changes based on their data can cause traffic to become up to 30% more efficient, reducing fuel consumption and CO2 emissions by as much as 2.2%.
They’re also highly deployable, being compatible with roughly 99% of surveillance cameras. This has significant implications when considering that the UK currently has over 5 million surveillance cameras, and as its software based, it provides a more cost effective solution. There is no need to incur infrastructure or installation costs when setting up as the CCTV is already in place. The only piece of equipment required is the processing device, which integrates with the existing network.
Route Konnect’s technology has the benefit of being extremely mobile with a low barrier to entry. Often City Councils and consultants conduct short-term studies, which traditional camera solutions aren’t set up for without being costly and inflexible. By focusing on software integration, Route Konnect can provide the option to set up easily with quick access to analytics without having to manually outsource the video to discover the results.
Route Konnect’s testing journey
Strengthening their algorithms by collating large amounts of data from different environments.
Prior to becoming involved in Zenzic’s CAM Scale-Up programme, Route Konnect relied on accumulating their data to analyse it retrospectively. By testing their technology with the testbeds they were able to gain access to cameras at a street level, enabling them to process results in real time.
Mohamed explains:
Being part of the Zenzic CAM Scale-Up programme has helped us to accelerate the deployment of our solution, providing us with the information to better communicate our unique offering with our prospective customer base.”
Route Konnect worked with Smart Mobility Living Lab: London to integrate their software with the computer platforms, testing and monitoring their algorithms for each location. They installed the software in roadside cabinets to deliver real-time feedback. Midlands Future Mobility provided CCTV footage at their urban and rural units and ASSURED CAV offered highway access in order for Route Konnect to test edge cases that they wouldn’t have access to in other environments. They also worked with Convex by using their platform to coordinate their data with other data sets in order to provide their customers with even more insights.
What would success look like:
Over the next few months Route Konnect will continue to build their real-time data set for analysis, with the aim to accumulate a year’s worth of predictive data. This will provide a deeper insight into the fluctuations of traffic and behaviours at peak times. By conducting long-term analysis they will have a more thorough, robust data set that will inform their traffic management control algorithms and provide the basis to implement best practice for managing junctions, traffic lights and areas with dense traffic.
Route Konnect’s software is extremely flexible, over time they would like to grow their business to monitor and analyse movement in high density footfall areas, like retail, stadia, exhibitions and conferences. Additionally, they’re in the process of building a platform which has the potential to provide tailored dashboards to clients with real time outputs.
Programme results
Route Konnect’s testing programme has resulted in business success across three core aspects.
Product evolution:
Route Konnect says that collaborating with CAM Testbed UK enabled them to refine their understanding of the needs for their product across several use cases, as well as providing insights to help them improve their video analytics-based solutions.
A best-in-class solution:
During testing, Route Konnect were able to demonstrate that their vehicle counting algorithms are robust to large-vehicle obfuscations, making them a viable solution for replacing magnetic loops . Maintenance of magnetic loops costs council thousands per year and causes road users hours of frustration through road closures.
Sustainability:
Route Konnect were able to run tests on, and validate, their real-time, multi-camera turning count analytics running on low-powered, edge, computation Nvidia Jetsons. This will help achieve smart junctions and will tackle fuel usage inefficacies that contribute 2.2% of all global CO2 emissions.
More SME case studies
Providing solutions for navigating challenging environments through high-accuracy geolocation technology.
Improving insurance savings and reducing accident rates through live GPS tracking.
Using neuromorphic software, Grayscale AI provides human-like precision to navigating roads.
Revolutionising the safety of vulnerable road users by using point-to-point radar technology.
Transforming how motor claims are processed through their connected claims platform.
Find out more about the
CAM Scale-Up programme
discover more
Talk to us
Want to talk about connected and automated mobility in the UK and see how Zenzic can help you?
Related articles
{{ teamMember.name }}
{{ teamMember.title }}