On Counting Shoppers Thermally

From Storefrontbacktalk. Video based tracking systems continue to evolve:

' ... Many retail stores rely on customer-counting systems triggered by body heat despite the fact that (as proven by the case of roasted chickens being confused with infants) the technology has its shortcomings. Up until this summer, The Limited, a 240-store clothing chain with outlets in malls and shopping centers, was one of them, said CIO Roger Coville.

Coville said the chain suspected the thermal-imaging system wasn’t too hot when it came to accuracy and, convinced by a pilot project that compared the system’s capabilities for truthfulness with those of new equipment that relies instead on analysis of video data, In his testing, video-based counting was 20 percent more accurate than its thermal predecessor. Oh, the CIO added, it’s also a lot cheaper, which makes it a hard combo to ignore ... '