COM8 Vision, our new AI CCTV, is live today. Many workplaces already have CCTV. A warehouse might run forty cameras, a building site fifty and a school twenty. Yet almost nobody watches them live. Someone opens the footage after something goes wrong, such as a fall or a forklift that hit someone.
By then the cameras have often recorded the warning signs for hours. A pallet stood in front of a warehouse fire exit all afternoon. In a clinic, the defibrillator was hidden behind a parked trolley for a whole shift. At a restaurant, the morning delivery waited in front of the back-door fire exit until lunch. The camera saw it, and nobody looked.
The International Labour Organization estimates that work accidents kill 330,000 people every year, and that 395 million workers are hurt at work.
COM8 Vision is our fix for cameras that nobody watches. It is AI CCTV: software that watches the cameras you already have, spots safety problems while they happen, and tells the person in charge. It works the same way in a factory, a food plant, a shop or a school. It also times each problem and gives every site a safety score out of 100 that is fair to busy and quiet sites. COM8 STUDIO, the Dubai software company behind it, built it for sites in the UAE and across the region. You can see the full product on com8vision.com.
What is AI CCTV, in simple words?
AI CCTV is normal CCTV with software that understands the picture. A normal camera only records. Live CCTV monitoring needs a person at a screen all day, and people get tired and miss things. AI CCTV looks at every picture in the video and recognises things in it: a person, a forklift, a box, a hard hat. It uses computer vision, a type of AI that recognises objects in pictures.
Then it checks a rule that you set. A rule might say that nothing may stand in front of this fire exit for more than ten seconds. When someone breaks the rule, the software records the problem as an event and tells someone.
It does the job of a safety officer who looks at every camera at once and writes down when each problem started and ended. You will also see this called AI video analytics or intelligent video analytics. They mean the same idea.
| Normal CCTV | Motion alerts | COM8 Vision | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it does | Records video for someone to watch | Sends an alert when anything moves | Spots a named safety problem |
| When you find out | After an incident, if someone checks | Every time anything moves | While it is happening |
| Who is told | Nobody | Whoever watches the alerts | The person who owns that area |
| What you can measure | Nothing, unless someone counts | Number of alerts | How long each problem lasted, and a score |
What does COM8 Vision do?
COM8 Vision does three jobs on every camera you connect.
- It spots the problem. A blocked fire exit, a person too close to a forklift, or someone in a medicine store who should not be there.
- It times the problem. The clock starts when the problem appears and stops when the camera sees it fixed.
- It alerts the owner. You mark areas, called zones, on each camera picture. Each zone belongs to one person or team, such as a site supervisor, a ward manager or a store manager. It can also be the HSE team, the health, safety and environment staff. That owner gets the alert.
Nobody has to tick a box to say a problem is fixed. The event closes itself when the camera sees that the problem is gone, so nobody can close it early.
Does AI CCTV need new cameras?
No. COM8 Vision reads the recorder you already have. A recorder is the box that stores your camera footage, often called an NVR (network video recorder) or DVR (digital video recorder). Today it works with Hikvision and Dahua recorders. You do not need special safety cameras or a new AI CCTV camera.
Your IT team creates a read-only account on the recorder. Read-only means COM8 Vision can watch the video but can never change, delete or move it. Your recorder keeps recording exactly as before.
You also add one small computer, called an edge box, next to the recorder. By default it is a Mac mini, Apple's small desktop computer, and one box handles about 12 to 16 cameras. The AI runs on this box, inside your building. It plugs into your network with one cable and only sends data out, so your IT team does not have to open the firewall.
The install takes about half a day. The box comes online about ten seconds after the setup software runs, and adding ten cameras takes about ten minutes.
What can COM8 Vision spot today?
COM8 Vision works from a list of 102 named safety concerns (types of safety problem) in 13 categories. The AI spots 57 of them on your cameras today. Your team can report the other 45 by hand in two clicks, so they still count until the AI learns to spot them.
| Category | What it spots today |
|---|---|
| Emergency readiness | Blocked fire exits, blocked escape routes, blocked first-aid and defibrillator stations |
| Vehicles and traffic | People too close to a moving forklift or truck, vehicles in walkways |
| Access and zones | People in danger areas, inside the safety fence of a machine or robot, at a medicine store, alone in a cold room, or at a pool outside supervised hours |
| PPE | Missing hard hats, where hard hats are required |
| Fire and gas | Blocked fire extinguishers and gas shut-off valves, people at gas stores or on a hot kitchen line who should not be there |
| Electrical | Anything left in the clear space in front of an electrical panel |
| Tidy walkways and hygiene | Blocked walkways, people crossing from dirty to clean areas |
| Work at height | People near open edges, under crane loads, at the edge of a loading dock |
| Occupancy | Too many people in a room, a stairwell or an area |
| Security | Cameras that go offline or get tampered with, people in a cash office |
PPE means personal protective equipment, the safety gear people wear at work. In the UAE, employers must provide safety gear that protects workers from injury. PPE detection checks hard hats today. Detection of bright safety (hi-vis) vests is still being tested. Gloves, eye protection and face masks are tested on your own cameras before any alert for them goes live.
Some checks are not live yet. Fire and smoke detection, intruder alerts, wet floors and fire doors held open are still on the roadmap, which means planned but not live yet. Your trial, called a pilot, only switches on what works today.
Where can businesses use AI CCTV?
Any site with cameras, fire exits and people at work can use AI CCTV. COM8 Vision comes with eight industry packs. A pack switches on the concerns that matter most for that kind of site. It is only a starting point, because every customer can still switch on any concern.
Construction sites
Exits on upper floors get used to store building materials. Workers stand at the open edge of an unfinished floor or walk under crane loads. COM8 Vision flags missing hard hats inside the zones you mark, and sends each event to the subcontractor who works there.
Warehouses and logistics
Forklifts and the staff who pick orders share the same aisles. In the US, forklifts killed 614 workers between 2011 and 2017, according to US government figures. COM8 Vision measures the real distance in metres between a person and a moving vehicle, not how close they look on the screen. It records a near miss whenever a person stays within three metres of a moving forklift for more than two seconds. That is a moment when someone was nearly hurt. COM8 Vision also catches pallets that are left in front of a fire exit at peak time. Near misses matter because OSHA, the US safety regulator, asks employers to look into them as well as injuries.
Factories
When a production line change runs late, workers sometimes reach past the safety guard of a machine. COM8 Vision raises a critical event the moment a person steps inside the safety fence of a machine or robot. It also flags anything left in the one-metre space in front of electrical panels.
Hospitals and clinics
The crash trolley (the cart of emergency equipment) or the defibrillator ends up parked behind something during a busy shift. COM8 Vision times every blocked escape route and first-aid station, and it flags anyone who enters a medicine store you mark as restricted. If a ward corridor exit is blocked for more than ten seconds, the ward manager gets the alert. Patient falls are not detected yet. They are on the roadmap.
Food factories
Some rooms in a food factory must stay extra clean, and people must change their clothes before they go in. Some walk straight in from the yard. COM8 Vision flags those crossings, and crossings into areas where allergens such as nuts must be kept apart. It also flags a person working alone in a cold room.
Restaurants and kitchens
The back door is a fire exit, yet it is often where the morning delivery waits. COM8 Vision flags blocked back doors, blocked gas shut-off valves and people on the hot kitchen line who should not be there, across every branch. Each alert goes to the person who can fix it. The back door alert can go to the branch manager and the hot line alert to the head chef.
Shops and supermarkets
Stock cages (wheeled metal trolleys) and boxes pile up in front of the stock room exit. COM8 Vision times those blocks, flags people in the cash office, and tells you when a camera goes offline. An area manager can see every store side by side and find the one with the most blocked minutes.
Schools
COM8 Vision watches escape routes, laboratory stores and stairwells that get too crowded. It can also flag anyone at the pool outside supervised hours. A person at the chemistry store can go to the lab technician, and a crowded main stairwell to the site team. It does this without identifying any child or teacher.
Groups with many sites
COM8 Vision uses the same score formula for every site, so a busy depot and a quiet shop compare fairly on one screen. A regional manager can see which branch needs a visit this week.
Why does COM8 Vision time every problem?
How long a problem lasted shows how bad it was. A cook who walks past the back door with a crate blocks the exit for a few seconds. A delivery left there can block it for forty minutes. COM8 Vision counts the minutes of every block and calls this number blocked minutes.
Safety rules do not allow even a short block. Dubai Municipality's construction safety code says gangways, doors and stairs must always be kept clear of anything that blocks them. In the US, OSHA's exit route rule says nothing may be placed in an exit route, "either permanently or temporarily".
Here is how one blocked exit in a restaurant plays out:
- The morning delivery is left in the back-door fire exit zone. The clock starts.
- After ten seconds, COM8 Vision raises a critical event for the zone owner, here the branch manager.
- The branch manager gets the alert, sends someone to move the boxes, and marks the alert as seen.
- The camera sees the exit clear for five seconds. The event closes and the minutes are counted.
Over a month, blocked minutes show you a pattern. One back door may cause most of the problem, at the same hour every day, when the delivery arrives. In a warehouse it may be one exit near the loading bay, and in a clinic one ward corridor. That turns a general complaint about untidy exits into one clear job for one person.
How does the AI CCTV safety score work?
A workplace safety score is only useful if you can explain it. COM8 Vision publishes its formula, so anyone can check their own number.
Every event takes points off the score. How many depends on two things:
- How serious it was. Each kind of problem has a set level, and a blocked fire exit is critical. Low is worth 1 point, medium 3, high 6 and critical 12.
- How long it lasted. The points grow the longer a problem lasts. They double at 10 minutes, triple at 20 and reach four times at 30 minutes or more.
COM8 Vision then works out the points lost for every 10 person-hours the cameras saw. Person-hours means the number of people on camera multiplied by the hours they were there. This makes the score fair, because a busy shift is not punished for having more people. The result is taken away from 100. A score of 90 or more is an A, then B, C and D in steps of ten, and below 60 is an F.
Take one exit that is blocked for 30 minutes. That is a critical event, so it is worth 12 times 4, which is 48 points.
- On a quiet night shift with 16 person-hours, that is 1.6 groups of 10, so 48 divided by 1.6 takes off 30 points. The shift scores 70, a C.
- On a busy day shift with 120 person-hours, that is 12 groups of 10, so the same block takes off only 4 points. The shift scores 96, an A.
The same sum works between sites. A busy hospital wing and a quiet clinic, or a large store and a small branch, are judged per person-hour, so they compare fairly. The blocked minutes still show the full 30 minutes, because a blocked exit is dangerous on any shift. A supervisor can also mark a false alarm with a reason, and it never counts.
Who gets told when something goes wrong?
Each event goes to the owner of the zone where it happened. You mark the zones yourself in the browser, on the real camera picture, and a change goes live within five seconds. The COM8 Vision product tour shows this zone editor in use.
How serious the event is decides where the alert goes. For each channel you choose the lowest level that sends an alert. A site might send only critical events to its group chat but every event to email. Today COM8 Vision sends alerts to four places:
- The COM8 Vision dashboard, a web page that shows events as they happen.
- Email.
- A Telegram group chat for the site.
- Your own HSE software, through a direct data link called a webhook.
WhatsApp alerts are on the roadmap. At the end of each shift, COM8 Vision writes a short shift report in simple words. It covers the score, blocked minutes and near misses, and you can download it as a PDF or a spreadsheet.
There are four roles: IT admin, site manager, supervisor and viewer. A viewer can only read. Access is set per site, so each store manager sees their own store while an area manager sees them all. On a building site, a main contractor can give the client's safety officer viewer access, so both sides see the same numbers.
Does AI CCTV invade people's privacy?
Not with COM8 Vision. Privacy is a fair question to ask about any AI CCTV system. It matters even more in a clinic, a school or a shop, where most people on camera are patients, pupils or shoppers. COM8 Vision makes four promises that cover everyone the camera sees.
- Face blurring happens on site. The edge box, the small computer next to your recorder, blurs the head of every person it detects. It does this before any picture leaves your building, so no face can be seen.
- No face recognition. COM8 Vision never tries to identify who someone is.
- Nobody gets a personal score. Scores belong to zones, shifts, sites, supervisors and subcontractors, never to one person.
- Video stays on site. Only the event details and one blurred photo per event reach the dashboard.
The blur only covers people the AI detects, so a person the AI misses is not blurred. The dashboard still never receives video. The event data is stored online in the COM8 Vision cloud. Hosting inside the UAE is on the roadmap, so the data is not kept in the UAE yet. Your data is never used to train any AI model.
How do you start with COM8 Vision?
You test AI CCTV with a paid four-week pilot on about ten of your own cameras. It is judged on one number your team already cares about: how long your emergency exits are blocked.
- On a 45-minute first call, we choose the cameras that matter and the owner of each area.
- Your IT team creates the read-only account and gives the edge box one network port.
- The install takes half a day on site.
- In a two-hour workshop, we mark out the first 10 to 20 zones with your safety lead.
- Two weeks of shadow mode follow. The system records events but sends no alerts, and we adjust the rules to your site before anyone gets a message.
- Alerts go live for two concerns, on most pilots blocked exits and people too close to vehicles, and we review the numbers together.
From signing to live alerts takes about three weeks. Prices are not published: you pay per camera, per month, plus a one-off setup fee, quoted after the first call. We sell you the edge box for what it costs us, or you can use your own.
COM8 STUDIO also makes COM8 Voice, an AI voice agent that answers your business phone. To plan a pilot on the site that worries you most, contact our team.
