Have you seen a similar camera somewhere? Perhaps it does not just record what is happening, but scans your body and transmits data to someone’s computer.
In Novosibirsk, smart cameras are being tested to identify patients with ARVI and covid
A resident of the Novosibirsk Technopark, a startup Health Vision, has launched a pilot series of smart cameras. They read biometric data and analyze the state of the person caught in the lens. Two cameras have already been installed in Akademgorodok. NGS journalist Alina Kaur tested how they work and talked to the head of the developer company Igor Mendzebrovsky. We will tell you how much a smart camera costs, how it calculates infected people and why the Russian market, according to startups, is not yet interested in such a development.
Masks in public places and temperature measurements at the entrance to certain buildings (such as a shopping center or government) have become an integral part of our lives over the past year. And soon, perhaps, another one will be added to these rules. Novosibirsk startups have developed smart cameras that calculate employees with signs of SARS in offices and transmit this information to their bosses. According to the developers, the technology can replace live face control — no more security guards and office managers with non-contact thermometers, which are often completely useless due to the low temperature of 34-35 degrees.
The company’s office is located in the Academpark. On the 13th floor, there are two small boxes in the corner of the hall. The employees scurrying to and fro as if they do not notice them. The cameras are still working in test mode and do not affect their work. They do not inform management about the health status of employees, but simply pass the data on to the developers.
According to the head of the startup Igor Mędzebrowski, who was able to talk to the NGS only on Zoom, the idea to create a smart camera appeared in dockyard times. One of the large European companies turned to an entrepreneur with a request to optimize the work in their structure.
Igor Mindzebrovsky began to cooperate with the Novosibirsk Technopark in 2013
— The employees of this company are insanely expensive, and when one person gets sick, other colleagues start to get sick, people drop out of the process, clients suffer, including banks, insurance companies … We worked on their request, tested a couple of hypotheses and ran into technological problems , — said Igor Mindzebrovsky.
With the advent of coronavirus, the startup accelerated work on the project. The developers have come up with a video surveillance system that scans all people entering the building. The camera reads the indicators of temperature, heart rate, respiratory rate. Thus, the device recognizes potentially infected people and transmits information to the authorities.
In this format, notifications are received to company leaders
— The technology of face recognition that we see now is already the last or the century before last. Our product works on neurochips, which calculate and spin the neural network directly on themselves. Our camera is autonomous, not connected to the Internet and does not leak personal data, does not record pictures. The camera works in real time. It was important for us to maintain anonymity. There is a tendency in the world to change the receipt of personal data. Therefore, we initially laid down that we did not want to know what kind of person he was. We simply identify that they are homo sapiens. And the company itself determines who it is, — says the head of the startup.
They now produce commercial camera «pilots» that analyze a small number of metrics. For example, a smart camera can check the presence of PPE on a person, measure temperature, and use a heat map to identify where employees gather to detect violations of social distance. Smart cameras also use sensors to analyze the content of carbon dioxide in the air and dust. In the next few years, the developers intend to expand the number of camera indicators to 25.
One of the parameters is the recognition of the temperature of the employee who passed under the cameras
Cameras, according to Igor Mendzebrovsky, are not for sale, but are leased along with the software: “We put up to 25 cameras per outlet and charge 2–2.5 thousand dollars per month for a subscription”.
So far, only companies from the Scandinavian countries — Sweden and Denmark — have become interested in smart cameras. The new development has not yet found its application on the Russian market.
— Since 2013, when I came to work at the technopark, my company is 99.9% export-oriented. We are now looking at the American market and thinking about how to enter it competently. We will simply buy a company already on the market and implement video surveillance systems. Basically, our company is a startup with limited human and financial resources. We cannot sell them everywhere. I’m not yet a Chinese entrepreneur with $ 1 billion, ”explains the director of a Novosibirsk startup.
At this stage, the new technology cannot be used in public places — for example, at airports or railway stations
According to the Kontur.Fokus system, Igor Mendzebrovsky is the General Director and the sole founder of the Limited Liability Company Enterraidias NSK LLC. The company was registered in May 2016 in Akademgorodok. The company is diversified, its list of interests includes research and development in the field of natural and technical sciences, as well as the development of computer software, activities for the creation and use of databases and information resources. LLC Enterraidias NSK closed 2019 with a net profit of 5 million rubles.
PLOT
At the end of last year, the regional authorities allocated a plot of 10.9 hectares to the Novosibirsk research and production sites — Biotechnopark and Academpark. It is planned to use it for the construction of the second stages of these facilities.
