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Nest Gives Its Security Cameras Brains Using Google's Computer Vision Software
Nest Cam (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
Nest is starting to give its security cameras the ability to understand the world.
The Alphabet-owned smart home unit announced on Thursday that it would start incorporating deep learning software into its two security camera products. The software was built by fellow Alphabet company Google.
Now, all the video data Nest collects will be sent to the servers, where the deep learning software will try to determine if there’s a person in the frame. If the software identifies a person, it will then send an alert to the Nest user saying either it thinks there’s a person or that there’s definitely a person in front of the camera.
The goal of the new software is to reduce the number of alerts users get on their phone. Instead being told every time the wind blows some leaves on a tree, the algorithms tries to identify more useful data.
Right now the software only identifies people, but eventually the software could get smart enough to identify specific people or if a car pulling into the driveway is a stranger’s car, said Maxime Veron, director of product marketing at Nest.
Nest insists that the video data is stored and analyzed on its own servers and not on Google’s. It’s only adopted the deep learning software from Google and worked with the company to tailor the algorithms. The deep learning software is the same Google uses for Google Photos, a service that automatically organizes and labels stored pictures.
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Nest has been using some of its customers data to train the deep learning software to be able to identify people on the security cameras (with their permission, said Nest).
This is the most direct public collaboration between Google and Nest to date under the Alphabet structure, but clearly other things are happening behind the scene. Just last week, a few dozen Nest employees moved over to Google in order to simplify work on a cohesive “Internet of Things” platform. Veron said they’ve been wanting to collaborate more like this for a while now, but are only now starting to find common ground. “For us, it’s a matter of making sure we work closely with Google to bring great features to our customers,” said Veron in an interview.
Nest is doing its best to move on from a rough year. The company’s mercurial CEO and cofounder, Tony Fadell, departed soon after a report in the Information came out that detailed a disastrous integration between Nest and security camera maker Dropcam, which Nest had acquired for $555 million in 2014. Dropcam employees complained of Nest’s arrogance and began departing the company en masse, including its two cofounders, Greg Duffy and Aarmir Virani. Duffy would go on to describe Fadell as a “tyrant bureaucrat” responsible for holding back progress.
Former vice president of Motorola Mobility Marwan Fawaz has since taken over as Nest’s CEO and he seems to be doing a good job keeping the company moving forward. Soon after joining Nest, he launched the company’s outdoor security camera and now pushing forward with big software updates like this one.
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