Bear intelligence
you can trust.
It all started with 11 kids & an empty playground.
At Yobetsu Elementary School in Shakotan, signs of a bear could mean weeks without walking to school or playing outside. The problem wasn’t simply that bears might be nearby. It was that nobody knew.
Was the bear still there? Had it moved on? Had there really been a bear there in the first place?
Sentinel began as a solution to that uncertainty: a way to give communities better evidence for decisions that protect people without imposing unnecessary restrictions on everyday life.
Not a demonstration. Not a stock photograph. These are the kinds of observations Sentinel is built to find in the real world.
Strength in numbers.
Sentinel doesn’t rely on a single viewpoint. Multiple cameras work together at each monitoring site, combining still imagery and video to build a persistent picture of activity in the field.
Those sites, in turn, become part of a larger network. Sentinel Core—our central server and software platform—brings observations from across the system together for processing, creating a constellation of evidence rather than a collection of isolated camera feeds.
Despite appearances, the cameras themselves are no standard security cameras bolted onto a bear system. They are purpose-built to adapt intelligently to their surroundings and deliver uncompromising wildlife detection, day and night.
With suitable placement, Sentinel can detect objects about the size of a small car at roughly 200 m, and person-sized objects readily at around 50 m.
150,000images captured, processed and analyzed every day across the three Sentinel installations in Shakotan.
At that rate, Sentinel examines more than 50 million field images a year—an observational net designed to support public safety and help keep tourism destinations open on as many days of the season as conditions allow.
Connect the dots.
Sentinel builds a reliable picture of the field by progressively evaluating and cross-checking observations from multiple cameras and sensors. Its multi-stage pipeline is designed both to find what’s there and reject what’s not.
Mark III, the third version of the Sentinel system, assesses still images and video together. A still preserves detail; video reveals movement, behavior, changing angles and features visible only as an animal moves. Combining both produces stronger evidence and helps resolve ambiguous sightings.
Every significant observation retains an audit trail from capture through classification, verification and alert. Sentinel records what was seen, when and where, how it was assessed and whether a notification was sent—reducing tens of thousands of images to the few that matter without losing the evidence behind the decision.
Spring into action.
When an observation requires attention, Sentinel turns evidence into an information stream designed for action. Verification and notification happen within the system, so customers receive the information they need without having to interpret a complicated processing chain.
Notification policies and delivery methods can be customized for each customer. In a typical deployment, a verified bear alert can arrive by LINE within just a few seconds of detection. Sentinel is engineered to communicate when necessary and maintain silence when it is not: it means what it says and says what it means.
More importantly, Sentinel is designed to provide actionable intelligence for evidence-based decision-making—to give local officials a factual basis for public-safety decisions, grounded in what is actually happening in the field.
Complex for us.
Simple for you.
Sentinel Mark III coordinates cameras, field equipment, still images, video, analysis, verification, alerts, equipment records and service history. Customers don’t need to understand that complexity—and they shouldn’t have to.
A high-performance detection pipeline.
Behind the scenes, Sentinel Core combines sophisticated detection, filtering and analysis algorithms with continuous monitoring of adaptive capture, processing load, detection rates, camera health and long-running trends. It gives us the depth needed to operate, refine and maintain the system without passing that complexity on to the customer.
That operational and analytical depth is what lets Sentinel continuously turn a distributed field system into dependable evidence.
Forget the complexity and focus on the wildlife.
A single view of monitoring sites, wildlife observations, bear alerts and system status. Current snapshots from each camera make field conditions immediately visible, while simple cards present confirmed wildlife sightings without exposing the machinery that produced them.
Walking distance from the field.
Driving distance from our customers.
Sentinel is not an off-the-shelf system assembled from somebody else’s ideas. At Verbium, we design and develop the hardware and software ourselves. We fabricate and paint parts, assemble and test systems, install them in the field, and service them ourselves.
That matters because improvement never has to travel through layers of suppliers or departments. If we discover that something can be done better, we can go out and change it. From power consumption to detection algorithms, a customer can call Verbium and speak directly with someone who understands that part of the system.
Most of all, quality and customer service are not simply means to an end for us. They are goals in themselves—things we continually pursue. The result is a level of service as distinctive, responsive and customer-focused as Sentinel itself.
From uncertainty
to evidence.
Knowing what’s actually happening on the ground means better decisions—and a better chance for people and wildlife to coexist in peace. For bears to have the space to be bears, and for kids to have the space to be kids.
And that’s just fine with the students at Yobetsu Elementary.
Want the details?
Explore Sentinel’s features, components and pricing—from the intelligence inside each camera to complete field configurations and ongoing service.
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