Multiple Edge Computing Devices with Computer Vision for Social Distancing

Coronavirus disease, widely known as COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Once infected, a person can spread the virus through their nose or mouth in small particles when they cough, sneeze, speak, or breathe. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one way to be protected from the risk of virus infection is to stay at least 1 meter apart from others while wearing a properly filtered mask. The study aims to design and develop a multiple edge computing system with computer vision capabilities to monitor the adherence of social distancing in multiple locations and in real time. An edge computing device uses a camera to process a stream of images. Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) was utilized for faster inference processing to detect people. The person's location will undergo transformation to get a 2D perspective. Then, a distance calculation algorithm will be imposed to each pair of persons detected to detect breach of social distancing protocol. For every breach detected, location coordinates will be sent to the host database for visualization and monitoring. The use of multiple edge computing devices for computer vision application was compared to the IP camera system in monitoring multiple locations. It is found that utilization of multiple edge computing devices has significant advantages in terms of power consumption, data acquisition, image processing and inference, and setup cost.