The idea is definitely cool (and important/impactful at this time if successful). That said, in the midst of a global pandemic where human density is inherently dangerous and social distancing is espoused, naming a product "Safe by Density" gives the exact opposite initial reaction you're probably hoping for.
This is a cool concept, though it appears to only care about the total number of people being below a set threshold regardless how people interact (i.e. maintain social distancing)
Shameless plug: two friends and I put together a small app that uses security cameras feed to calculate real-time density + estimate "safe" space capacity:
Doesn't help when things are pressured into opening up and then you're forced to make the decision to put yourself at risk by going to work or get fired.
Georgia reopened weeks ago and yesterday hit their lowest levels of cases and deaths since the outbreak began at 22 and 3 respectively: https://ga-covid19.ondemand.sas.com/
The stylized design makes my brain recognize is as just another random inspirational poster or an add, not something I should pay attention to. We have standard and widespread symbols already for stop/go which should be applied here in some form.
Having seen the way people 'queue' when waiting outside an eatery implementing social distancing guidelines - this only solves part of the problem.
Edit: Perhaps integrating it with some sort of QR Code based ticketing system for entry would alleviate the issues of people queueing (or huddling) outside the store?
My first thought is this puts way too much stock in the idea that rooms are safe as long as they aren't too packed. To me it seems like this 1.5m rule and person limits aren't actually backed up by real research and are just numbers pulled out of a hat when something had to be done fast.
We shouldn't be finding ways to get people back in to shared buildings as soon as possible because infections don't just give up because the TV on the door said OK.
I was just thinking that the difference in fatalities between NY and SF might be that NY has a colder climate, so airtight buildings with more heating.
A virus like corona with a high R0 would spread like crazy in a building with active ventilation piping. Or an airliner.
I could not find whether this integrates with NFPA etc. to help interpret blueprints (or simplified diagrams). While determining capacity is relatively easy, it could definitely be easier.
Interesting, but I'm skeptical it could make some semblance of normal life "safe" purely through occupancy counts. It also seems like a likely very expensive solution to something that could be solved with a handheld clicker. Corporate offices might splurge for it, but they're also more likely to just have people working from home.
In an ideal world, we just give this stuff away and the applications on the platform become the primary value. Some people are open to that others are less used to having a widget and not owning it. Will take time.
I think people think that shooting down ideas makes them sound intelligent and “in the know”, but in reality it just makes you sound rigid and not creative enough to see the merit in a idea.
This seems to be a common attitude on HN, but it’s less than useful. Genuine critical thinking is great... dogmatic cynicism is useless.
I think there are some valid concerns here. Someone running a clicker is already common procedure at some busy places, and it's often a hostess or someone else who is already "doing stuff".
Likewise any sensor is going to open up some questions about the data it collects and it's method of action - what's the error margin?
I think there's arguments for systems like this as well, but it's on you to make them, not just complain about others being skeptical.
First off - this is really neat, especially the focus on privacy and the use of AI at the edge.
It seems like the occupancy limit problem for small rooms is much more challenging than the building-density problem, since a single error could DOS the room.
Def. We call that the OB1 problem (off-by-one). If either event detection (did something happen) or event classification (entry or entrance) is wrong, you can be off the whole day. To solve that, we have a different approach / non-threshold approach for boolean occupancy. Not implemented here.
It's a custom sensor in the lidar family. Uses infrared lasers as illumination and generates depth data. Essentially millions of height values. When depth is rendered to be human legible it look looks like greyscale silhouettes (dark grey is far away, lighter gray is nearer). Sensor processes those values on the edge and published +1/-1 and telemetry data (system health).
Skepticism on this stuff is valid. If we're going to distribute large scale infrastructure that measures human movement we ought to be critical of it. So many systems purport to work but don't. Others are way over engineered. And a lot market as if they're sensors when they're really just cameras taking pictures of behavior.
I’m currently working on a similar proprietary system that is similar to the one described in this article, and I can tell you that there is much more involved here than “counting people in a room”. Claiming someone with a clicker in front of a door is a better solution misses dozens of other use cases where this isn’t at all possible or cost effective...
But you know, everyone on HN is an expert in everything.
The name bothers me a bit. Social distancing does not make us “safe” just “safer”. It worries me that people might think things like masks and possibly this tool are more effective than they actually are and become complacent.
A phone app could replace this right? Using the front facing camera you could run some image recognition to count the flow of people and show the statistics on screen. Put the phone on a stand and leave it running. Much cheaper.
Their whole selling point seems to be that their hardware + software can count people accurately without needing a camera. The premise being that cameras spook people.
Cameras are already commonplace enough where I work, for security purposes. So not sure how easily cameras can be eliminated.
The dashboards they provide don't seem to be have to be coupled to the kind of ($850) hardware they are selling. Like you said, cameras should be able to do the job.
I don't think cameras will be displaced / eliminated. It's just a question of whether or not they will be accepted as a form of active surveillance or remain a method of security. Today, they are largely security but it's entirely possible the world moves toward mass surveillance.
Many have / are trying this. Harder to pull off than it seems. Privacy is a big part but distributing the infra to do this at scale is nontrivial. A number of years back Placemeter used to pay you 50/mo to install your Android device on a window sill so they could understand movement. Never quite took off.
MAC address tracking is one approach but it's imprecise and with the proliferation of "things with antennas," you have to do a lot of reconciling on the backend to not count 1 person as 3 when they have multiple devices on them. Euclid analytics tried this. It's a common but flawed approach to count (use depending).
Viruses don't care about how many people are in a room, and this doesn't seem like something people are going to worry about much 10 years down the road.
First of all, if that number is in the interval [0,1], it's a qualitatively different situation than if the number is in [2,∞].
Jokes aside, there is a statistical relationship between the number of people in a room and the distance they can/will keep from each other. More density means more close encounters on average. Less density doesn't guarantee nobody gets too close to someone else, but it makes it less likely.
At the same time, I'd much rather shop in a small neighborhood grocery store with 5-10 other patrons instead of 200.
Trader Joe's and other retailers (at least in the bay area) have to delegate a full-time employee to the front door to throttle incoming patrons. This would free up that employee.
In my area Walmart has started making each aisle one way and counting people coming into the store. Just yesterday I went in and it's already devolved into no one following the directions on the aisle, no one seems to be in the slightest bit considerate about trying to give others space to go around. People were regularly reaching around someone getting an item and coming into close contact instead of waiting all of 5 seconds for them to get their item and move.
There are already plenty of news articles about customers doing increasingly outrageous things and attacking employees because they dared to tell the customer not to violate store policy around purchase limits, senior hours, mask policies, occupancy limits, etc. The fancy sign telling someone to wait will not free up employees because there will inevitably be a chunk of the population who ignores it outright and when they just walk in the door, others will follow. These policies are meaningless unless there's some actual enforcement.
I agree with this. It's compliance will be contextual / regional / etc. This is why the system also support real-time alerts and safe analytics. In the event a place like Walmart wants to more actively enforce they can. Display is just the public facing feature.
There are grocers who have required all corporate employees to work at least 3 days a week in a store bagging groceries, cleaning carts, and managing lines. Side not, essential businesses are the only real experts in safety right now. Everyone WFH is just guessing.
if not keeping a 2m distance if going to get us killed, then I guess many would not have a problem with keeping the 2m distance. Ultimately it is all about survival.
Relax dude, it is a pandemic, we have enough data which tells us how contagious it is, and what needs to be done to control the spread. It's going to pass, here in India, we have opened up almost all zones where there are no cases, and activity is almost back to normal.
Contagiousness is different than mortality. It seems quite contagious, but low mortality. But I am not in India right now - I am in the US where hysteria is everywhere and they are talking about continuing lockdowns for months longer, or basically indefinitely.
Mortality rate for the coronavirus is about 0.3% - the flu is about 0.002%. These are not comparable numbers. For every person who catches the flu and dies from it, 150 people who catch the coronavirus would die.
This is with the best treatment we can afford given the current contagion rate - if more people were infected, we could not afford treatment for them, and the mortality rate would climb.
indeed contagiousness is different from mortality, but think of it like this, if more humans are infected at the same time, it'll overload the hospital capacities,
this will
1- make it impossible to ensure proper care, since the hospitals will be overwhelmed.
2- also impact patients who require treatments for other illnesses, since systems will be busy and overloaded with the covid-19 patients.
Hospitals in the US are so lacking with patients that they are furloughing and laying off doctors and losing money. They never were overwhelmed and would not have been
