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Main Authors: Sethupathy, Ganen, Dumka, Lalit, Schagen, Jan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.29777
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author Sethupathy, Ganen
Dumka, Lalit
Schagen, Jan
author_facet Sethupathy, Ganen
Dumka, Lalit
Schagen, Jan
contents Public spaces such as transport hubs, city centres, and event venues require timely and reliable detection of potentially violent behaviour to support public safety. While automated video analysis has made significant progress, practical deployment remains constrained by latency, privacy, and resource limitations, particularly under edge-computing conditions. This paper presents the design and demonstrator-based deployment of a hybrid edge-based action detection system that combines skeleton-based motion analysis with vision-language models for semantic scene interpretation. Skeleton-based processing enables continuous, privacy-aware monitoring with low computational overhead, while vision-language models provide contextual understanding and zero-shot reasoning capabilities for complex and previously unseen situations. Rather than proposing new recognition models, the contribution focuses on a system-level comparison of both paradigms under realistic edge constraints. The system is implemented on a GPU-enabled edge device and evaluated with respect to latency, resource usage, and operational trade-offs using a demonstrator-based setup. The results highlight the complementary strengths and limitations of motioncentric and semantic approaches and motivate a hybrid architecture that selectively augments fast skeletonbased detection with higher-level semantic reasoning. The presented system provides a practical foundation for privacy-aware, real-time video analysis in public safety applications.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_29777
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle From Skeletons to Semantics: Design and Deployment of a Hybrid Edge-Based Action Detection System for Public Safety
Sethupathy, Ganen
Dumka, Lalit
Schagen, Jan
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
Public spaces such as transport hubs, city centres, and event venues require timely and reliable detection of potentially violent behaviour to support public safety. While automated video analysis has made significant progress, practical deployment remains constrained by latency, privacy, and resource limitations, particularly under edge-computing conditions. This paper presents the design and demonstrator-based deployment of a hybrid edge-based action detection system that combines skeleton-based motion analysis with vision-language models for semantic scene interpretation. Skeleton-based processing enables continuous, privacy-aware monitoring with low computational overhead, while vision-language models provide contextual understanding and zero-shot reasoning capabilities for complex and previously unseen situations. Rather than proposing new recognition models, the contribution focuses on a system-level comparison of both paradigms under realistic edge constraints. The system is implemented on a GPU-enabled edge device and evaluated with respect to latency, resource usage, and operational trade-offs using a demonstrator-based setup. The results highlight the complementary strengths and limitations of motioncentric and semantic approaches and motivate a hybrid architecture that selectively augments fast skeletonbased detection with higher-level semantic reasoning. The presented system provides a practical foundation for privacy-aware, real-time video analysis in public safety applications.
title From Skeletons to Semantics: Design and Deployment of a Hybrid Edge-Based Action Detection System for Public Safety
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.29777