What is it about?

We have developed a system to monitor if people follow social distancing during a pandemic using a mobile robot with a camera and indoor CCTV setups. The robot navigates to people too close to each other, advises them to move apart and also checks for high body temperatures/fevers. Our system was developed to assist healthcare and security personnel in public spaces with enforcing social distancing and contact tracing without putting them at risk of infection. Our system, by design, does not store or collect any personal data.

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Why is it important?

Our system assists healthcare and security professionals and prevents them from getting exposed to infections. We developed our system during the peak of Covid-19 pandemic with the hope that humanity is better equipped for future pandemics.

Perspectives

The Covid-19 pandemic exposed many inadequacies in humanity's current infrastructure to handle a pandemic. I believe that robots can collaborate with humans, take up their unsafe tasks, and become an integral part of healthcare and pandemic response. Such tools can help slow down the spread of a disease and save countless lives.

Adarsh Jagan Sathyamoorthy
University of Maryland at College Park

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: COVID surveillance robot: Monitoring social distancing constraints in indoor scenarios, PLoS ONE, December 2021, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0259713.
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