The renowned Andrew Ng founded Silicon Valley-based start-up Landing AI.

Andrew Ng is an AI technology leader known as the #1 most influential machine learning scholar globally. He also appeared on Time Magazine’s 100 hundred most influential people in the world for 2013. His company, Landing AI, works to empower companies to become AI-driven organizations.  On April 17, Andrew Ng tweeted that the company “created this AI to help our customers in essential industries maintain social distancing in the workplace. We hope many people can benefit from these ideas.”  (Medium.com)

Social distancing in essential industries

Many industrial organizations are quickly pivoting to the manufacture of sorely needed items related to COVID-19. These include surgical masks, hand sanitizers, and other emergency items.

However, employees working at these factories, for their own safety, should maintain a safe distance from other employees to prevent the risk of the coronavirus infection. Unfortunately, they sometimes forget.

Landing AI’s AI-enabled social distancing detection tool aims to solve this very problem. It monitors the working area and enforces the required distancing between employees as a workplace discipline.

How it works

The company implements the AI tool through the three steps of calibration, detection, and measurement.

The calibration method involves selecting four points in the perspective view (from an input video camera) and mapping them to the corners of a rectangle in the bird’s eye (top-down) view. From this mapping, the tool can derive a transformation to apply to the entire perspective image.

In the detection process, the tool applies a pedestrian detector to the views obtained after calibration.

In the final step of measurement, the program computes the bird’s eye view distance between every pair of people. It highlights those people whose distances are below the minimum acceptable distance in the color red with a line joining them.

“As medical experts point out until a vaccine becomes available, social distancing is our best tool to help mitigate the coronavirus pandemic and as we open up the economy,” the company said in a blog. “Our goal with creating this tool and sharing it at such an early stage is to help our customers and to encourage others to explore new ideas to keep us safe.”

Related Story:    Artificial Intelligence: Startup Kogniz Uses AI With Health Cams to Detect Fever