When you’ve peered deep into the heart of galaxies, looked out towards the edge of the Universe and gathered, organised and understood masses of data from observations at all wavelengths,  it´s fair to say you know a thing or two about surveillance.

Astrophysics is technology driven.  Once the equipment is in place, observation is the easy part. In 1983, analysing and modelling vast amounts of data took time, with mind-bending statistical analysis and expensive computers.  Bernard Jones was very much a part of that process.

With support from the Danish Government, Bernard and Janet Jones developed Europe’s first 'frame grabber' or video capture board for the newly launched IBM PC, along with software to drive it and acquire and analyse video pictures.  That development took just three years.  It was very much pioneering work: at a time when few people believed that a "home PC" could ever become an industrial computing platform.

Being an expert mathematician, Professor Jones then developed algorithms that enabled those painfully slow machines with limited memory to process images. In doing so, he not only created the world´s first 'paint' program but the basis of unique software that would eventually turn visual data into algorithms that a computer could use to 'understand' image content. There soon followed  image compression software that could shrink video footage to nearly half the size of an MPEG, with no loss of essential quality.

With negligible financial support but boundless conviction, the Jones´ continued to develop their acquisition hardware  and analysis software. By 1986, their technology had appeared on the BBC´s Tomorrow´s World, detecting when a single matchstick had been removed from a pile and, more significantly, gaving the world's first demonstration of what they called "non-motion detection".  They began to sell smart security systems to blue-chip customers world wide and by 2003 they had won a £1 million Home Office contract to supply alarm monitoring equipment to every high security prison in England.

In the summer of 2007 the  time had come to take Astraguard technology and products to a bigger marketplace. With new investors and subsequent injection of working capital, the company has made a considerable effort in 2008 and 2009 to reinforce the technology foundation for more powerful engines and a variety of improved functionalities for end-user.  A new organizational structure has been set up in order to prepare and carry out the first steps in accessing the international market, with new daughter companies in Scandinavia and India in addition to the continued and strengthened activities in the very competitive British market.