Be COVID-Ready with JARVIS

In psychology, there is a term called “priming” (more precisely associative priming) i.e. “exposure of brain neurons to one stimulus fires the neurons of another stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention”. In simple words, priming is a phenomenon when one will say “Jor se bolo” You will say “jai mata di!” without any conscious guidance.

The same happened with Covid-19 as well. When we are asked about the “precautions at a workspace against COVID-19”, a very first visual which our brain gets associated with is someone measuring body temp using a thermal gun. Though as per the medical data released by ICMR, in the Indian context, it has been established that 80 per cent of the cases in India never had any symptoms of fever, sneezing, coughing etc. Therefore thermal sensors or body temperature measurement alone is not going to help anyone.

So the question comes: what should one do when there is no luck with medicine for the next 7–8 months, no quick, efficient and economical way of knowing about infection! Lockdown? Lockdown again is not something which is going to help forever. Even with the lockdown, we are currently having a rate of 10,000 new infections per two days which effectively means that infection is still spreading irrespective of the lockdown.

A fight between life and livelihood

It feels like the whole humankind is facing the crisis of a lifetime, we are fighting for life at one end and for our livelihood on the other. India’s GDP shrank by 45% in the first quarter of FY 2020–21, and the unemployment rate reached 24% — which means one out of every four people is unemployed. This will further lead to various social instabilities viz-a-viz deaths because of hunger, social and economic exploitations, crimes etc. A highly populated economy like ours cannot go for lockdown forever. We have no other option but to learn to live with Corona and start the workspaces by following the rules of “The New Normal”.

The New Normal

As per data from the University of Hong Kong, only having a mask on face can reduce the spread of infection by 60 per cent! Just with precautions, one can slow down the spread, which is more effective than measuring the body temperature, which can identify only 20 % of cases!

But having a mask on the face itself is a “new habit”, and the problem with the human brain is it doesn’t want to give up on old habits easily. That is where the challenge comes.

Now there comes a need for creating a mechanism by which people are trained at workspaces for working in “new normals” by learning new habits. At the same time, a task force should be made inside an organisation which makes sure that all the precautions are followed. But How?

JARVIS: AI-powered video analytics for fighting Covid-19

Any organisation be it WHO, MHA, or your organisation can create Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) which must be followed to prevent the spread of Covid-19. But how to ensure that people follow these guidelines?

Of course, we can’t put a marshal behind every single employee to enforce the guidelines as it has its own human biases, errors, and limitations. This limitation brings us to JARVIS — an automated solution to monitor the adherence of SOPs in premises without having any biases or lags.

AI-powered solutions that need least manual involvement and allow for contactless functioning are being preferred all over the world. In the time of lockdowns and social isolation, some services and workspaces are still functional.

And these workplaces are asked to follow the following precautionary steps by MHA:

• Social Distancing/ Seating 6 ft away in office space
• Workforce with Mask
• Body temperature measurement
• No gatherings more than 5 people
• Not more than two people in the lift
• Disinfection and sanitisation of workplace
• Office vehicle only with 30–40 % capacity

Utilising our AI prowess, we have developed a product, JARVIS that automates the whole process of monitoring the workplaces and ensuring that everybody is following these guidelines to minimise the spread of infections. This product utilises, existing CCTV cameras and gives real-time alerts in case a person inside the premises is violating any of the norms. And the best part is that it doesn’t require any human interaction. JARVIS can help you with:

1. Face Mask Identification: As soon as someone walks into the premises without a mask on their face, JARVIS shoots a real-time alert.
2. Social Distancing Check: This makes sure that when there are a lot of people around, they are following social distancing and maintaining proper distance in between to minimise the chances of the virus spreading.
3. Fever Identification (FR): JARVIS when clubbed with a thermal infrared camera, starts giving real-time alerts if a potential COVID carrier is identified inside the premises.
4. Contact tracing: In case, a person is found to be COVID positive, our person re-identification technology lets the authorities trace their movements and identify anyone they came in contact. Thus putting them in quarantine and sanitising the areas in a targeted manner is essential to limit the spread of the virus.
5. Hygiene Check (cleaning/sanitation): The workspaces are now required to sanitise every 2–3 hours. JARVIS makes sure that the same is being appropriately observed and raises a real-time alert if it’s not. No need to do manual auditing anymore.
6. Video Wall with Real-Time Alerts: Along with all these features one can keep a remote watch at the whole premise with a video wall that will notify any anomaly with real-time alerts so no need for manual monitoring 24X7.

This entire system works together in keeping the virus from spreading and making the workplaces safer for things to start going back to normal without requiring manual efforts which could make it a mammoth task.

This whole thing will be over and we will make it out of it alive, but the world would never be the same. These precautionary measures will continue to be relevant in the future even after this storm settles down. Thus we have built JARVIS as an AI ecosystem to take care of keeping infections at bay.

Feel free to reach out to us for a quick demo at [email protected].