Technology Trends in the Covid-19 Pandemic

It’s time to accept the new normal and move on with life. In order to continue moving forward with life, we have to accept living with the coronavirus while taking essential precautions. To make our lives easier and more secure even during the pandemic, we are getting introduced to the new use cases based on various technologies every day. These technologies can help reduce the spread of the coronavirus while helping economies to stay open.

Some of these technologies have already demonstrated critical benefits to help day-to-day lives during the lockdown. Now is the time to further improve and converting them into commodities.  We will touch base some of the solutions which are likely to help us during post lockdown life:

People counting with AI Solution: The restaurants, shops, malls are opening up in June. Initially, we will see fewer footfalls. However, slowly the fear of getting infected will be replaced with moving out with care and we will see the surge in people venturing out for shopping. The onus of keeping people safe would rest in the shop and restaurant owners. This is also important for keeping their own staff safe at such places. Solutions needed for limiting the crowd in such a way that it is seamless with an individual’s shopping experience. Artificial intelligence (AI) based solutions are the answers to the times. AI-based CCTV solution that not only keep the count of people entering the shops/ restaurants but also uses face as a key to open the gates. The gate would not open for visitors after it reaches a threshold. This is a onetime investment for the business. Having a manual process not only has a recurring cost but also makes customers offended at times.

Regulating people to wear masks: Masks are becoming mandatory in public places. However, people still have a tendency not to wear a mask or have a mask hanging on their necks, just to show off. The latest AI-based Facial Recognitions Solutions are not only able to detect mask on face, but they are able to recognize a face with masks and also able to generate alarms when someone is not wearing masks. Such solutions are extremely useful for factories, offices, schools, etc. where identifying people with masks and encouraging people to follow rules are going to be challenging.

Touchless Attendance Systems: Finger based biometric attendance systems will be things pf past due to high chances of infections. Face Recognition based attendance systems are the need of the hour. Further, such attendance systems if integrated with the existing CCTV networks will be more useful cost-effective. Such AI-based solutions are available and can also be integrated with existing HRM and payroll systems.

No Touch Secure Access – Many lock manufacturers and gate manufacturers have started integrating their solution with face recognition solutions. Here the gate opening will be triggered by a registered face. Further security can be achieved by the second level of authentication with pose-based liveliness detection, face plus card systems, face plus smile to unlock functions where a person is prompted to smile for few seconds to open the gate. The system also helps tailgating or congested entry points to improve traffic flow and security.

Deep learning-based HR recruitment system: Face to face interviews are becoming unsafe and challenging. This is more difficult for IT and outsourcing companies where a large number of people are screened and hired by HR managers. Some of the AI companies have started developing proof of concepts for Deep Learning-based recruitment solutions. Here the AI will interview the candidates remotely. Natural language processing (NLP) will be used for gathering and analyzing the answers of the candidates. On the other hand, computer vision algorithms will be used to track the sentiments of candidates while answering the questions. The system will then make automatic grades of candidates helping HR managers to make decisions for certain roles. Such systems will also be able to suggest a suitable role for a candidate if he/she is found to be unfit for applied roles.

Robotics and Drones – Covid-19 pandemic has made us realize how heavily we rely on human interactions and to make things work. Labour intensive businesses like retail, food, logistics, and manufacturing are the worst hit due to the pandemic. Pandemic made a strong push to roll out the usage of robots and research on robotics. Many companies have started using robots to deliver food to those in quarantine also, in recent weeks; robots have been used to disinfect the areas.  Drones are in use to deliver food and other mandatory items to the people.

The society is undergoing a major transformation. People cannot be locked down for long and must come out to run their livelihood. Engineers and scientists have their duty to provide solutions which can help people to live their normal life and also remain safe with infections. The role of Artificial intelligence is more evident with many evolving use cases. This may be a major milestone for mankind, like what happened with the industrial revolution or introduction of computers in the past. Maybe this is the transformation towards the healthier economy for the world after a long spell of recession since 2008.

By Bikas Jha, Country Head, RealNetworks Pvt Ltd.