Bowler Pons deploys Cepton’s smart lidar solution to augment 3D security system for critical infrastructure

Cepton Technologies, Inc. (Cepton), an innovative provider of smart lidar solutions, is partnering with security solution provider Bowler Pons Solutions Consultants, LLC (Bowler Pons) to deploy a cutting-edge, lidar-enabled three-dimensional monitoring system.

Bowler Pons is a specialist in technology-focused enhanced electronic security systems for high-security applications, such as entry control points, perimeters, airspace, and other protected areas. Now, utilizing the insightful perception capabilities provided by Cepton’s MMT Vista®-P sensors as one of multiple sensing modalities, the Maryland-based company has launched a cost-effective, highly adaptable 3D monitoring system that accurately detects, tracks, and classifies objects to assess situations of interest against pre-defined threat characteristics, behaviors, and rule sets via a single fusion and analytics engine. The incorporation of Cepton lidar addresses some of the critical limitations of other sensors - such as traditional cameras’ lack of 3D image capture capability and reliance on optimal lighting conditions and radar’s low spatial resolution – and provides the integrated system with improved detection and categorization accuracy thanks to lidar’s high-resolution 3D imaging with embedded real-time dimension, location, and speed information. Further, the fact that the information capture by lidar sensors is “anonymous” (e.g., not personally identifiable) helps rapidly enable the creation of autonomous alerts, which in turn improve operator response time while simultaneously protecting individual privacy when detecting and responding to anomalies.

Mark Holmes, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Bowler Pons, said: “Cepton’s Vista®-P series lidar sensors combine high resolution and long range to offer higher-fidelity representations per cost unit of the actual environment and targets of interest for certain applications we’re currently exploring with our customers. Cepton’s directional, non-rotational lidar design has also made the Vista-P lidars easy to integrate across multiple environments and use cases. Via our collaboration with Cepton, we are able to deploy cost-effective lidar sensors in areas where our customers may not need a full 360 spinning lidar, but high-resolution visual capture of the environment and activities within it is a priority.

“Powered by intelligently processed lidar data, our solutions are able to address several critical capability gaps left by conventional electronic security systems. First, they enable real-time object detection, tracking, and classification in 3D. Second, they allow users to effectively distinguish between real and false or nuisance alarms and adjust signaling accordingly, resulting in reduced operator overload and associated insensitivity. Finally, their powerful integrated sensor suites enable data-rich analytics for multiple applications at the same time, including access control, throughput analysis, resource planning, safety monitoring, occupancy management, smart utilities, and more.

“Unlike what it usually takes to deploy a new technology, with lidar, our customers don’t necessarily need to tear down everything and build a new system from scratch. Instead, our partnership with Cepton offers an achievable mechanism for rapidly enhancing legacy and conventional security systems by integrating lidar with existing video and thermal cameras, radar, and other 2D or trip-line detection capabilities via Bowler Pons’ advanced analytic software.”

Dr. Jun Pei, CEO of Cepton, said: “Security applications demand precision, speed, and adaptability. Our smart lidar solution helps Bowler Pons to satisfy those demands by working seamlessly with other sensors to provide a complete image of the monitored space.

“Powered by Cepton’s proprietary MMT® (Micro Motion Technology), our lidar sensors are ideally designed for scalable applications given the performance, reliability, and cost-efficiency that they offer. I’m glad they have helped augment Bowler Pons’ security solution without introducing significant disruption to the customers’ existing core solution sets. Augmenting critical infrastructure security with lidar technology may be easier than one might think, and we look forward to working with Bowler Pons to further explore features and use cases where lidar enables higher levels of system efficiency, accuracy, and automation.”