Chapter 39: Accuracy Statement

1.0 FootfallCam 3D Stereovision People Counter Accuracy Statement

FootfallCam is a privately held company and leading global provider of people counting solutions. It is our aim to provide a highly accurate people counting solution to all of our customers so that they can have accurate data for business planning and strategizing.

Almost all good people counter vendors provide an accuracy claim of 95-98%. To go further, FootfallCam provides Accuracy Audit with video proofs for every counter installed. Therefore, we do not just claim to be always >95% accurate (98% on average), but we prove it to all our customers.

1.1 Accuracy under Test Environment

FootfallCam people counters are digital products which means the performance of each counter of the same specification should and will not vary by a large degree.

All our counters will go through carefully designed tests at the device level before being classified as ready stock for customers. As of August 2021, based on over 2.3 million test cases, our counters have achieved an average accuracy of 99.96% under "Lab Test" environment. The results are proof that our people counter hardware and video analytics firmware are able to function consistently with near-perfect accuracy and reliability.

• • 96% accuracy under Lab Test environment

1.2 Accuracy under Actual Site Environment

Our people counters have been installed globally across different regions. Each counter comes with an Accuracy Audit Report upon installation, where the system count is compared with the manual count based on the counter live view. We have randomly taken around 13,000 counters out of those which has been installed in 2019 to 2020 to derive the statistics below.  

Under "ideal" environment, the counting accuracy is above 99.7%.

• • Ideal environment is defined as counters having a mounting height of 2.6m to 3.5m, covering an entrance width of 2m to 4m.

Under "normal" environment, the counting accuracy is above 99.5%.

• • Normal environment is defined as counters having a mounting height of 2.3m to 4.5m, covering an entrance width of 2m to 10m (multiple devices may be used for wide entrances).
  • 99.7% accuracy under Ideal environment
  • 99.5% accuracy under Normal environment

1.3 Visibility on Actual Counter Accuracy

Theoretically speaking, digital products like FootfallCam people counters should have the same performance, returning around the same accuracy. However, analysis shows that counter accuracy varies due to environmental or other conditions.

We call these "Compromised" conditions which vary from site to site. Some examples would be:

• • Device not mounted in the correct position
    • Counting line is too close to the edge of the tracking area, resulting in limited areas for walk path tracking
    • Counters installed above a swinging door which create noise
  • Site personnel hovering or opening doors for customers
  • Child carried by an adult or child walking close together/holding the hands of parents
  • Staff with no exclusion tag, (Logistic personnel for example) entering the site out of store operating hours

Some of these conditions will not be identifiable without analysis on the live view of the counter and the data integrity. FootfallCam's accuracy audit system, together with proactive data monitoring provide not just the visibility of such compromised condition, but more importantly the visibility on the actual accuracy of the counters. Without this, claims on accuracy will just be claims without actual evidence to support it.

1.4 FootfallCam's Team of People Counter Tuning Specialist

Most accuracy issues stem from incorrect counter positioning and also site environmental factors. The mitigation to this would be first of all proper project management and installation support and second, accurate tuning based on site conditions.

The image below shows the counter accuracy distribution for different project management scenarios. This is a real-life field test result including all compromised environments.

 

Statistics show that counters that are installed and tuned by FootfallCam has the highest accuracy distribution.

Further analysis on counters installed and tuned by FootfallCam, by using Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) graph, we can deduce the following:

• • More than 99.5% of counters are achieving 95% accuracy and above
  • Around 70% of the counters are achieving 98% accuracy and above
  • Around 35% of the counters are achieving 99% accuracy and above

At FootfallCam, we have a team of tuning specialist, with years of counter-tuning experience for different site environments and therefore customers can rely on us to ensure that counters are counting in the optimum condition

1.5 Maintaining Accuracy after Tuning/Verification

FootfallCam has a system in place in order to monitor the health and accuracy of our counters. And this system is automated, without the need for our customers to perform manual checking. Alert will be sent to us whenever counter is showing abnormal behavior or data patterns, and we will have a proactive support team to look into those issues.

Occasionally, we would encounter situations where the re-tuning of counters are needed. This is extremely rare and even if it does happen, 90% of the time is due to store environment change, including but not limited to the following scenarios:

• • Store refurbishment where the walk paths are altered
  • Accidental altering of device angle/positioning (during renovation or maintenance work, etc.)
  • Relocation of counter

For such situations we would need the cooperation of store managers in notifying us regarding the expected date of refurbishments so that impact on counting accuracy will be reduced.