1K Blog Marathon: Day 24
It’s been roughly a month since Amazon introduces ‘Distance Assistant’, its latest breakthrough in response to the pandemic issue we all now are facing.
Because of the Covid-19 Pandemic, the whole world was affected. So many habits and traditional norms were put aside for the prevention of the spread of virus. Normally, we are all social persons – left and right gatherings, parties during Fridays, window shopping during weekends, going to churches, or even having a family affair. These things, if not banned, were put on restrictions and limitations. Churches can only accommodate 10% of its original capacity, lock downs were implemented, social distancing is implemented inside restaurants and other entertainment places, and social gatherings were not permitted to commence.
Amazon, an American multinational technology company that caters e-commerce and online shopping, also faces this critical health issue. And with this in mind, they came up with a new system of working process inside their company.
Last June 2020, Amazon roll out their own system that will benefit all of its employees. It is called “Distance Assistant”.
The problem is “how to keep and enforce social distancing”? So they came up with the idea of monitoring the people inside the building. With the use of cameras installed, they added visual feedback through a 50-inch monitor. Whenever a tolerable social distance is not met, specifically 6 feet from other person, a red circle will appear on the person’s feed in the monitor, signaling that they are disobeying the social distancing. If everything is fine, a green circle will be seen on the person.
According to the blog of Brad Porter, Vice President and distinguished engineer leading Amazon’s robotics initiatives, the technology behind this is inspired by Radar Speed Sign, wherein an LED panel will display a vehicle’s speed as it approaches. With this display, the motorist will be aware if he/she is going faster than the recommended speed on the road. Amazon uses Depth Sensors to exactly measure the person’s distance from one another, giving an accurate measurement to be processed by the system.
So many breakthrough solutions are created in response to the pandemic scare, and we are expecting more of it in the future – even pandemic is solved. This really changed our way of life, and as an intelligent race, we always came up with ideas to improvise, adapt, and overcome!
“And that’s one blog, stay hungry!”
“The true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.”
Plato
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