Shapes AI Launches Sociadex™ for Monitoring Workplace COVID-19 Risk
AI platform scans CCTV footage to flag on-premise risks and provide publicly viewable safety scores Sociadex™ deployment at the Second Home workspace featured on BBC’s Click programme.
London, UK — 30 Sep 2020 — Shapes AI, an award winning computer vision and artificial intelligence company, has launched the Sociadex™ platform that leverages existing CCTV cameras to automatically monitor adherence to social distancing protocols. Push notifications are sent to those on premise when social distancing levels fall below thresholds, and up-to-date insights show managers trends over time with risk heatmaps.
A Social Distance Score (SDS) is generated which can be displayed online and onsite.This instills confidence in staff, tenants, members and clients to enter a specific location. Sociadex™ can be installed anywhere, from shopping centres, to schools, public transport stations, airports, hospitals, warehouses, stores bars, and offices. To learn more, visit https://www.shapes.ai/covid.
Since the pandemic, online retailers have thrived while those who still have jobs have managed to work remotely. Brick and mortar stores still see less footfall and traffic post-lockdown than even January levels, while offices and workspaces remain largely vacated as people do not feel safe going back into a crowded environment. With a possible resurgence and another potential lockdown looming, the situation is only getting more challenging.
Offices and customer-facing businesses are experimenting with various COVID safety measures such as unidirectional systems, hand santization stations, and 2m distance signage. Whilst these measures must have some efficacy, there is still highly limited insight to the actual levels of adherence to these guidelines, and thus to the actual safety levels on any site. Managing premises to stay COVID-secure is currently a very manual, time-consuming and ad hoc process. Patrons have little visibility of whether the space they are about to enter is actually safe.
Implementing and monitoring these new behaviours is not straightforward as authorities, and now businesses, have discovered over recent weeks. To facilitate this, Shapes AI has leveraged its proprietary computer vision technology to automatically assess the extent to which these preventive measures are being observed and to highlight any hotspots of potential danger. Distance is not the only factor that affects the likelihood of COVID spreading within an environment and that is why Sociadex™ generates a Social Distancing Score that takes account of a range of pertinent factors.
These include time spent in each others’ presence, the occupancy of a room, the presence of face coverings and behaviours such as coughing. This provides a richer and deeper insight into the overall COVID safety level of an environment.
“We have to accept social distancing and wearing of face coverings as a critical part of our everyday lives for a while to come, if we are to safely transition out of lockdown and back to some semblance of normality,” says Seena Rejal, CEO and Founder of Shapes AI. “In these unprecedented times, stakeholders at all levels need tools to be able to adapt to the ‘new normal’ and to do so quickly. We believe our solution can provide a key part of the toolkit needed to allow businesses and communities to open up again.”
International creative workspace provider, Second Home, had to shut their locations during lockdown and members are only now making a tentative return. To give their members and staff the confidence to enter once more, and to communicate the efficacy of their efforts in creating a COVID-secure environment, Second Home recognised the need to go beyond the aforementioned safety measures. As seen on BBC’s Click programme, Sociadex™ was used at the co-working space, providing transparency to members about the safety level of the premise at any given time.
“I get alerted on my phone, so if there’s a crowd congregating I can split it up quite quickly. We have a one directional system, but if people were bumping into each other then we would definitely look at rerouting people,” says Jessica Mant, GM of Second Home. By providing transparency with the social distancing score, and having timely notifications sent to its occupants, the platform boosts confidence amongst staff and members. This is a powerful tool in the armoury of landlords and facility owners — alongside newly implemented hygiene and distancing protocols — to help facilitate a speedy, confident and safe return to near-normal work life.
Shapes AI’s privacy-first, GDPR-compliant Sociadex™ platform can use existing CCTV feeds and requires no additional equipment to operate on-premise and remotely. The technology analyses macro behaviours of people and crowds, meaning it does not incorporate any element of facial recognition. It can be deployed as a turnkey solution, sitting atop existing CCTV infrastructure and seamlessly integrating with video management systems and workflows. It can also be embedded on edge-capable cameras.
The company has pledged to offer its platform at cost to institutions and organisations on the front line of the fight against COVID-19. To discuss how Sociadex™ may be able to support your organisation, please contact hello@shapes.ai or visit https://www.shapes.ai/covid.
About Shapes AI
Shapes AI is an award-winning and groundbreaking technology company based between London and Silicon Valley, with a team hailing from the University of Cambridge, Stanford, Harvard, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon. The company’s mission is to build a safer, better and more accountable world with the power of explainable visual reasoning technology. It’s computer vision AI empowers machines to ‘understand’, reason over and explain what they are seeing, going beyond simple object detection and image recognition. This offers rich video analytics and actionable insights into events, activities, and occurrences. It is light to train, quick to deploy, and ideal for complex real-world situations.
For more information, please visit https://www.shapes.ai/
Media Contact Details
Adam Kendall, Shapes AI
London, United Kingdom
+44 20 3239 6949