Posted On: Oct 20, 2021

Today, the AWS Panorama Appliance is generally available. The AWS Panorama Appliance is a new device that enables customers to improve their operations and reduce costs by using existing on-premises cameras and analyzing video streams locally with computer vision.

Customers in industrial, hospitality, logistics, retail and other industries want to use computer vision to make decisions faster and optimize their operations. For example, these organizations often need to perform physical inspections of production lines to spot defects in manufacturing products, monitor drive-through queues at quick-service restaurants to enhance customer experience, or optimize the layout of their physical locations by improving product placement. These customers typically have cameras installed onsite to support their businesses, but they often resort to manual processes like watching video feeds in real time to extract value from their network of cameras, which is tedious, expensive, and difficult to scale. While some smart cameras can provide real-time visual inspection, replacing existing cameras with new smart cameras can be cost prohibitive. Even then, smart cameras are often ineffective because they are limited to specific use cases and require additional effort to fine-tune. For example, updating a smart camera due to a simple change in the environment (e.g. lighting, camera placement, or production line speed) means that a customer often has to contact their vendor for support which can be costly and time-consuming. Alternatively, some customers send video feeds from existing on-premises cameras to third party servers, but often the required internet bandwidth is costly or facilities are in remote locations where internet connectivity can be slow, all of which degrades the usefulness and practicality of the analysis. Consequently, most customers are stuck using slow, expensive, error-prone, or manual processes for visual monitoring and inspection tasks that do not scale and can lead to missed defects or operational inefficiencies.

The AWS Panorama Appliance helps customers to solve these challenges by enabling them to improve operations and reduce costs by using existing on-premises cameras and analyzing video streams locally with computer vision. Customers can get started in minutes by connecting the AWS Panorama Appliance to their network and identifying the video feeds for analysis. Because the computer vision processing happens locally on the AWS Panorama Appliance at the edge, customers can save on bandwidth costs and use it in locations with limited internet bandwidth. Additionally, the AWS Panorama Appliance is integrated with Amazon SageMaker (an AWS service that makes it easy for data scientists and developers to build, train, and deploy machine learning models), so customers can update their computer vision application in Amazon SageMaker and deploy the model to the AWS Panorama Appliance themselves.

For customers that do not want to build their own computer vision applications, AWS Panorama Partners like Deloitte, TaskWatch, Vistry, Sony, and Accenture provide a wide range of solutions that can address unique use cases across manufacturing, construction, hospitality, retail, and other industries. For example, customers in the retail industry have used AWS Panorama Partners to develop computer vision applications that can analyze foot traffic to help optimize store layout and product placement, analyze peak times when additional staffing is needed to assist customers, and quantify inventory levels.

Customers like The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, Tyson Foods, Inc., and The Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport are are working with AWS Panorama Partners to use AWS Panorama to improve quality control, optimize supply chain, and enhance consumer experiences at the edge.

The AWS Panorama Appliance is available for sale on AWS Elemental in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and most of the European Union. The AWS Panorama service is available today in US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Canada (Central), and Europe (Ireland), with availability in additional AWS Regions in the coming months. To learn more and get started, visit the AWS Panorama product page.