Design Challenge
#1: How might we keep our communities in Singapore safe and healthy during the global COVID-19 pandemic?
Project Description
During the circuit breaker period, citizens still go out for exercises and shopping life essentials. Temperature checkpoints have been set up at doors of shopping malls or supermarkets. However, in public parks and outdoor spaces, e.g., East Coast Park and Marina Bay Area, although people density is high, temperature check is not implemented. Temperature monitoring is difficult in public parks and open spaces, because such places have no clear entrance and people also keep moving. To solve such challenges to temperature checking, we propose to deploy autonomous vehicles with non-contact thermal detectors to cruise in the open spaces, scan people / detect their temperatures, and generate alerts and report to the control centre when finding abnormal persons.
Criteria #1: Value
The solution can automatically and autonomously scan the temperatures of many people at the same time and on the move. It is safe as requiring no physical contact. It increases the efficiency and coverage of temperature checking, by being autonomous and automatic. It is easy to manufacture by just integrating a non-contact thermal detector on top of an existing small-scale autonomous vehicle platform (previously developed for logistics applications).
Criteria #2: Inspiration
The inspiration is from the observation of STATIC temperature check kiosks in many buildings, but NOT in public parks and OPEN spaces where there are dense and MOVING crowds. The solution idea is based on the combination of an autonomous vehicle (which cruises around) and a non-contact thermal detector (which detects temperatures of individuals in the public open space). To allow for rapid deployment, we can integrate existing autonomous vehicle platforms and off-the-shelf non-contact thermal detectors.
Criteria #3: Impact
The solution will reduce the risk for contagion in the crowds in public parks and open spaces.
Criteria #4: Timeliness
Month 1: prototype one system with existing autonomous vehicle platforms and non-contact thermal detectors;
Month 2: deployment and test;
Month 3: redesign, refine and redeploy to test.
Criteria #5: Systems Thinking
Static temperature check points have already been set up at many places. The proposed idea will make the temperature monitoring coverage more systematic by providing autonomously cruising and moving temperature checks in wider spaces. The proposed design is a system integration of existing technologies to meet the needs for mobile temperature checking of the human crowds in public spaces.