(China Daily) Artificial intelligence-powered technologies are increasingly being
used to help contain the novel coronavirus outbreak in China, with
several tech companies tweaking their facial recognition algorithms to
identify people who are wearing masks.
Enterprises that use facial recognition for access control and
attendance system needed to make the tweaks as traditional algorithms
may not be sufficient for recognition. For, masks used by the employees
often cover some features of the face.
Beijing-based tech company Hanwang Technology Co Ltd has upgraded its
core algorithm and introduced a new facial recognition system for those
who wear masks.
Huang Lei, vice-president of the company, said Hanwang Tech took just
a month to develop the upgraded version. "We have rich experience in
overseas markets for more than 10 years. In certain areas such as Africa
and the Middle East, we have products that can recognize facial
characteristics when the skin color or big beards pose difficulties," he
said.
"We can quickly upgrade the existing products to recognize faces with
masks," said Huang, adding that the upgrade often helps in accurate
identification.
At present, the upgraded system has been deployed in the Bird's Nest
stadium, Beijing No 3 Intermediate People's Court, Beijing Fire Museum
and some other companies.
According to the government regulations about epidemic prevention and
control, those who do not wear mask will be refused entry and alarms
will be set off to remind the related authority on duty.
Internet, big data, AI and cloud computing should be deployed to
prevent and control the epidemic, including the research of gene
sequencing of the virus, tracking of patients, population flow and
community management, said the Ministry of Industry and Information
Technology.
Facial recognition has been one of the biggest emerging technologies
over the past few years, as seen by its widespread use in everyday
lives.
Yitu Technology, a Shanghai-based AI startup, has developed a
contactless entrance guard system by applying facial recognition
technology, which could identify each visitor within 300 milliseconds,
with a 99.9-percent accuracy rate.
The company said the intelligent system can screen people even when
they are wearing a mask. At present, it has been put into use in the
headquarters of China Taiping Life Insurance, China CITIC Bank, the
Shenzhen Civil Center, Baodi Square and other places.
SenseTime, another AI company that specializes in computer vision and
deep learning, has launched a fever screening system, which could scan
up to 10 people per second without direct contact and remotely identify
individuals who display symptoms of a fever, lowering the risk of
cross-infection and enhancing the speed for fever screening in crowded
public places. The system integrates sophisticated AI algorithms with
infrared thermal technology, and can also identify any individual
without a face mask and send notification, with a success rate of over
99 percent.
Yu Xiaohui, deputy director of the China Academy of Information and
Communications Technology said AI companies have given full play to
their advantages, and released various AI-empowered solutions and
products in a short period of time, making contributions in areas of
epidemic monitoring, diagnosis and ensuring people's livelihoods.
"Some core AI technologies such as computer vision, natural language
processing, robots and speech recognition have been widely used in the
prevention and control of the outbreak," Yu said, adding AI is playing a
positive role in helping enterprises resume production.
Source: By Fan Feifei and Dujuan |
China Daily |
Updated: 2020-02-26 09:03
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