Emerging technologies are helping us to fight against COVID 19 successfully. With social distancing being the only method to tackle the spread of viruses, technologies such as Artificial intelligence and drones are of great use now. AI techniques like Machine Learning (ML), Natural Language Processing (NLP), and Computer Vision are now using to diagnose/predict COVID-19, and to manage its socio-economic consequences. The world is very much worried about the uncertainty of this pandemic. Lockdowns and unexpected interruption in the business process have slowed down the growth and development in all industries. However, All possible solutions are implementing in the current situation. And it is for sure that AI and drones playing a major role in the solutions using to overcome the crisis. For the time being let’s have a quick look at usages of drones during the COVID-19 phase.
Are Drones Useful?
“As remotely piloted devices, drones are naturally effective at minimizing human interactions, which is crucial when the same officers meant to safeguard the communities can potentially become vectors for the virus to spread,” – Prem Vislawath, co-founder and CEO, Marut Drones, told ET Digital.
Due to the increasing effects of COVID-19, it’s safer if human-to-human contact is minimizing. Drones are very much useful in this aspect. With the help of drones, many activities can do with less human intervention. The aerial surveillance also helps authorities monitor public spaces and avoid crowd gathering successfully.
So indeed drones have got huge applications in the crisis and usage of drones during the COVID-19 phase is very useful.
Usages of Drones During COVID-19
The ability of drones to cover about 20 km a day along with needed commodities makes it applicable in wide areas. Drones developed nowadays are able to withstand a weight of around 60 kgs and hence it’s possible to equip these devices with all needed elements. HD cameras, thermal cameras, loudspeakers, disinfectants are some of the common commodities carrying by drones in COVID 19 affecting areas. Some of the notable applications of drones include:
- Surveillance: Authorities use camera-equipped drones for active surveillance at every corner of the city. A fleet of drones is implementing to monitor crowd gathering and to find people who are not using protective equipment in public places. The recorded video feeds are storing for later purposes. This application ensures social distancing with less human involvement.
- Announcements: Like surveillance, drones are also using for broadcasting important announcements. Drones equipped with both cameras and loudspeakers are using for this purpose.
- Disinfectant Spraying: Along with social distancing it is also necessary to make sure that public places are virus-free. In order to do this with less human involvement, drones are now used for spraying disinfectants at infected areas.
- Delivery Drones: During this pandemic phase, transportation of needed commodities is not that easy. Drones having high weight endurability are using for transporting required commodities. Medicines, groceries, etc. are moving quickly and safely using such drones. In recent months government granted for conducting experimental delivery of Covid-19 vaccines within Visual Line of Sight (VLOS) Range using drones. look at: https://www.weforum.org/videos/these-super-fast-drones-will-deliver-covid-19-vaccines-to-remote-areas.
- Temperature Check: Surveillance drones are now also equipping with thermal scanners to monitor the temperature of individuals. This application of drones helps us safely point out the person from a group who is most likely to have the infection.
AI and Drones During COVID-19
With the introduction of Artificial Intelligence and its constituent techniques, drones have become more intelligent. Rather than just autopiloting, drones equipped with elements like cameras, thermal scanners, loudspeakers, etc. are able to analyze their surroundings and take decisions accordingly.
Computer vision and Natural Language Processing (NLP) is playing a major role in detecting the various types of objects while flying in midair. A high-performance onboard image processing and a drone neural network are using for object detection and tracking while flying into the air. Drone captures the data using camera and sensors, and they are then analyzing to make the necessary decision. Speaking on a practical scale, we have “Garuda” and “GLOBE” as some of the examples for the above said drones.
Other AI Implications…
Drones are just one of the areas of AI applications. During this COVID phase, AI is also contributing through other fields of applications.
Information Verification: With the spread of COVID 19, the spread of fake news regarding it is also rising. AI helps us stop the spread of false news with advanced NLP techniques. Leading social media platforms have already set up such information verification algorithms.
Diagnostic AI: Medical field is another field of AI application that has become really useful in this phase. Nowadays, AI is using to analyze chest CT scans for accurate prediction and diagnosis of COVID-19.
Tracking and Prediction: Track the records and predict the spread of this pandemic using NLP and machine learning techniques. The AI-driven algorithm analyzes billions of data points including global news reports and reports of animal disease outbreaks.
AI Researches: AI is now also using for molecular synthesizing. This application of AI helps us formulate the accurate remedy for the disease by analyzing its database consisting of the molecular structure of drugs. This application of AI is really promising as no vaccine is developing yet for COVID 19.
Powering Intelligent Drone And AI Applications
Intelligent drones and other AI applications are requiring to analyze images, texts, or audios in most cases. Certainly, this analysis is made possible by Computer vision and NLP techniques. The development of computer vision-based drones requires lots of training data to analyze various types of objects while flying. The drones must be able to detect every individual, sense crowd gathering, and analyze public places. In Medtech applications, devices must be able to accurately predict and diagnose the disease from scanned images or documents. As well as, for both the applications to work with better precision, it requires large sets of precisely labeled data for its training. Namely medical image annotation and Aerial image annotation. Labeling large volumes of data requires utmost care and experience and this is why it’s better to hire an experienced team like us.
Who We Are?
We are a bunch of data labeling experts capable of powering such AI applications. We analyze medical, aerial, and all other forms of images to label them with needed information. Take a look at our aerial image annotation services and Medtech annotation services to know more. Even though it is the time of COVID-19 none of our services have stopped. We have set up a work from the home system for our team so that all your data labeling requirements should met. Both quality and data security are primarily assuring in our wfh system.