The COVID-19 virus has led to a sudden disruption of businesses and everyday operations. But slowly, everything is getting back on its feet. The virus is subsiding, and it seems like normal life is coming back.
But surviving the post-COVID-19 world will not be easy. Business leaders and governments should not lose focus and forget the current security measurements. Policies are vital to keeping healthy after the lockdowns are over.
Ensuring regulations and monitoring compliance is not critical — it is literally a matter of life and death.
Summary
Governments and institutions have enforced specific regulations to ensure the slowdown of the COVID-19 spread in the post-pandemic period. But unfortunately, most of these regulations are difficult to implement.
How can authorities make sure people wear a face mask? Or to avoid groups of people and crowds? Or to force people to stay at home if they have symptoms?
The upheaval of the Coronavirus pushed authorities to improve. They created sudden policies like maximum occupancy at convenience stores, having someone check the temperature at entry ports, or separating crowds, etc. But, although these strategies are vital, authorities need to change the way they enforce them.
Advances in technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), video, and edge computing can be the best assets to ensure difficult COVID-19 compliance and regulations. Video intelligence can be applied to detecting, analyzing, and alerting on regulatory COVID-19 policies.
In this solution brief, we’ll go through the video intelligence joint solution from Lanner and Gorilla Technology for ensuring COVID-19 compliance. The high-performance edge computing power of Lanner’s LEC-2290 will provide real-time response and low-latency for video intelligence, and Gorilla Technology will provide optimized IoT security and video analytics.
The Post-Pandemic Challenges
Country-wide, institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US, need to take action by monitoring the spread of the virus. Additionally, private businesses, and other commercial sectors such as supermarkets, shopping centers will also need to step in.
But monitoring the spread of the virus and enforcing the COVID-19 policies is no easy task. The following are common challenges faced by institutions like the CDC or businesses when ensuring compliance with the COVID-19 policies.
Provide workers a safe environment
Remote work had to be encouraged and, in most cases, enforced during the COVID-19 quarantines. A large percentage of businesses succeed with remote work, and will likely stay this way, but the more significant portion will need to open their doors to their workers. These businesses that require their workers to be in a collocated office space or floor space will also need to enforce the COVID-19 policies. How can they keep their workers in a safe environment, when it is inevitable that they’ll need to work side by side?
Protecting points of entry
During the worldwide quarantines, basic supply buildings such as supermarkets and pharmacies were some of the only places allowed to be open. These places had to follow strict rules to protect their employees and their customers. They had to leave someone at the door controlling access to the building, separating crowds, and in some cases giving additional supplies like hand sanitizer, face masks, gloves, and even checking the temperature on each individual.
Opening wide public places
Crowded public places were likely the central focus of COVID-19 infections. Airports, subways, train stations, theme parks, stadiums — were the first ones to be controlled and, in some cases, closed. The post-epidemic time will bring difficulties for these places. Adding human resources into the frontline to enforce these COVID-19 regulations is not feasible anymore.
How to protect data and privacy of subjects?
Although video surveillance is a crucial technology to ensure public safety, it also creates a new and complex challenge: the privacy of subjects. Deploying video surveillance and intelligence at private buildings is more manageable, as long as individuals are aware and approve it. But getting video data from people unaware in public places, like parks, airports, and shopping centers, is complicated due to data privacy regulations.
Despite wanting to rush back to businesses, leaders need to focus on how to protect their employees and customers by ensuring compliance with the COVID-19 policies.
Risking more people on the frontline and opening the doors so that people can rush back to work is not a smart decision.
Video Intelligence Solution
To meet with the challenges of compliance, an AI-based video intelligence solution is required, that leverages video analytics acceleration at the hardware level and a sophisticated software program designed to detect anomalies and generate alerts for the monitoring personnel. Lanner and Gorilla Technology have jointly validated LEC-2290 and the latter’s AI. video software as an integrated solution for edge video intelligence that can be deployed for video-based behavior analytics.
The Edge Computer
Running AI and machine vision workloads on the cloud is efficient for non-mission critical applications, but this is not the case for the fight against COVID-19 infections. When it comes to public safety, there should be no tolerance for delays.
The best place to run these AI-optimized video analytics algorithms is at the edge — right where the action is happening. These algorithms generate tremendous amounts of data, so leaving and analyzing the data on the spot is key to fast response.
The LEC-2290 edge AI computing appliance incorporates Gorilla Technology’s intelligent video analytics and IoT security to provide video intelligence.
Key Features of LEC-2290:
- It is powered by the 8th generation Intel® Core™ i7 processor (codenamed Coffee Lake S).
- It is designed for deployment in diverse environments (-20°C to 45°C).
- It meets the high-power POE requirements of network applications.
- It features 6x RJ45 GbE LAN ports (with 4x PoE outputs for IP camera power supply).
- 2x removable HDD/SSD trays and 2x PCIe slots for the GPU accelerator.
The Video Analytics Platform
Intelligent video analytics is the software used to keep track of the video feeds in (close to) real-time. The software should monitor videos and identify attributes, precise patterns, and behaviors on the screen.
Video intelligence edge solution is possible when running Lanner’s intelligent edge computing appliance (LEC-2290) with Gorilla’s real-time video analytics and IoT security platform. The joint solution (Lanner + Gorilla Technology) aims to deliver AI-optimized video intelligence while ensuring cybersecurity and data protection at the edge.
Key Features of Gorilla Technology Software:
- Gorilla IVAR’s 1.8 Smart Surveillance: Gorilla’s IVAR (Intelligent Video Analytics Recorder) is a comprehensive surveillance solution. IVAR incorporates Video Management Solution (VMS) and Intelligent Video Analytics (IVA) in one platform to allow you to manage and analyze all video feeds in a single place. IVAR also includes network trapping for suspicious threats.
- OpenVINO Optimized Edge AI. Gorilla’s IVAR-partnered with OpenVINO optimized edge AI to bring higher video feed real-time analytics without facilitating GPU’s.
- IoT Security. Improve security by leveraging secure data transmission and management on Lanner’s LEC-2290. Gorilla Technology incorporates network monitoring, alerts, and reporting through the Network Security Server (NSS) / Security Convergence Platform (SCP).
Additional Components
The solution also requires additional components such as cameras and monitors. Cameras can be deployed at the entrance of public places or in open areas to provide feeds for video intelligence algorithms. Additionally, thermal cameras detect the temperature of bodies, and video analytics define whether an individual has a fever. These cameras must be fully enclosed to protect the privacy of subjects.
Another component is the monitor, which allows a frontline security agent to see and use human judgment that would be outside AI-based vision capabilities.
Benefits
What can a high-performance computer, cameras, and computer vision do for COVID-19?
Video intelligence facilitates enforcing COVID-19 compliance. The solution helps to screen people with or without face masks, detect possible fever, and promote social distancing through crowd detection.
The solution can provide the following benefits:
- Detect people with or without masks. For a human, it is relatively easy to detect if someone is wearing a mask or not. But in places where there is no security frontline, anyone can get away without a face mask. If face masks are a COVID-19 regulation in a public space, business, work floor, market, the video intelligence solution can activate actuators such as opening doors, or sounding alarms.
- Detect fever. Fever is a common symptom of COVID-19. Thermal cameras can detect the body temperature levels from people in lines, open spaces, or points of entry, and feed the video data into the solution to screen out subjects with fever. This can help eliminate the risk of people measuring temperature with handheld thermometers and improve waiting times at entry points, such as airports.
- Promote social distancing. Ensure that everyone in a particular area is keeping a reasonable distance from each other. AI-based vision algorithms can help count people in certain areas, reduce crowds, and make environments safer.
- Create watchlists with infected subjects. Facial recognition helps screen out potential individuals with the COVID-19 virus. The solution detects the face and quickly compares it with a watchlist of infected individuals. When the face is found in the watchlist, an actuator can be initiated, such as an alarm.
- Protect data and privacy. Video surveillance puts tension around the privacy of people. But to help reduce the COVID-19 outbreak, government institutions and businesses can use video surveillance data and intelligence to monitor and keep track of people’s movement. Gorilla Technology incorporates network monitoring, alerts, and reporting through NSS and SCP.
Next Steps
For more information on the video intelligence solution or other Industrial and Embedded Box PCs, please visit Lanner America, or contact a sales representative.
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