Cisco Systems has launched new IP-cameras that boast the processing power to perform more complex video and audio analytics to support applications such as license-plate recognition and detection of gunshots and unattended objects. The video surveillance cameras —the 6500PD and 7530PD— include a digital signal processing (DSP) chip in addition to the core ARM processor found in standard cameras.

“(The DSP chips) have the real muscle to be able to take video, decompress it and to run image-processing algorithms that are part of video analytics to detect edges of objects and all the other sophisticated algorithms that video analytics need to detect objects, classify them, derive information from the video,” Brian Apgar, senior director of engineering with Cisco Systems, said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications.

“We’re working with other partners as well, like iOmniscient and IntuVision, to put even more complex analytics on (the cameras),” Apgar added.

An example of those advanced analytics is facial recognition in a crowd, which iOmniscient is demonstrated in Cisco’s booth at the ASIS in Atlanta.

Cisco also announced that the latest iteration of its video surveillance manager (VSM) —version 7.6— would be released in November.

The combination is intended to create a solution that helps users —in particular, those managing applications for remote site monitoring— manage their networks that are quickly expanding as more data sources, like cameras and sensors, are brought online.