One doesn’t usually associate casino activities with military operations but a smart surveillance camera system is set to cross into both worlds next week.
Published reports say Lockheed Martin will announce it is deploying RemoteReality’s OmniAlert360 and ThermalVision360 camera system on military ships to detect terrorist attacks from small boats aimed at U.S. Navy ships.
One such attack killed 17 Navy personnel aboard the USS Cole in a Yemen harbor in 2000. The Navy could expand its usage of the system to include protections for cruise ships or cargo ships from such threats.
The RemoteReality products will be part of Lockheed’s Fast Inshore Attack Craft Defense System (FIACDS) which integrates existing sensors, weapons and decision support systems with command and control systems to let ships detect, identify, verify hostility and target small boat threats beyond visual range, and then to engage hostile craft with Hellfire missiles as they penetrate the system’s five-mile defensive perimeter, Lockheed says. FIACDS also makes use of technology from FLIR Systems and Cisco.Other arms of the military are also looking at the RealReality system. The company has received $6 million in Small Business Innovation Research grants and development contracts from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the United States Marine Corps and other Department of Defense groups.
But military applications are not the only places this smart camera system watches over. RemoteReality has a relationship with North American Video to develop a system of enhanced 360-degree cameras for casinos and the gaming industry. The systems can monitor everything from casino security to individual players.
Such systems aren’t all that popular with poker players as you might imagine. Earlier this year there was a stink because the casino moguls at Harrah’s Entertainment barred Richard “Quiet Lion” Brodie – best known as the original author of Microsoft Word – from gambling in or entering any of its properties, including Caesar’s Palace, home of the World Series of Poker.
And of course casino have any number of other ways to secure their business. The New York Times reported last year that casino execs can remotely reprogram everything from payback to game themes via mouse clicks.
