"It could be used to detect whether someone is carrying a weapon-like object, or if they are planning to jump from a train platform and it can more accuracy match facial characteristics to a database," Snowdon said.

NICTA Embedded Systems CTO, Chris Nicol, said it will retain product IP even though Tyco has bought the final product.

"We will continue to develop the iBox as we always retain the IP for the fruits of our research," Nicol said.

"The project gathered considerable interest and it is fantastic that Tyco is supporting it."

The iBox is about halfway completed with OS development finished, and is part of a series of global developments in 'intelligent video' including IBM and US surveillance vendor ObjectVideo.