Preventing accidents and deaths is an excellent way to reduce costs rather than managing the consequences. The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work reportedly said that the annual cost of accidents at work is approximately $ 2.680 billion, $ 476 billion if we consider Europe only.
This is an objective close at heart at Italian innovator A.I. Tech. A.I. Tech’s latest product, the A.I. PPE (Personal Protective Equipment ), has been selected by Benchmark Magazine readers as a finalist for the Analytics and software innovation category on the Benchmark Innovation Awards 2022.
Based on advanced artificial intelligence algorithms, the AI-PPE is a video analytic app designed to detect the presence of workers inside the monitored areas and raise the alarm if some of them are not using Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) such as helmets and visibility jackets. There are no restrictions on the number of workers and areas to be monitored; the app can deal with multiple workers and areas simultaneously and can be used indoors and outdoors.
AI-PPE video analytics application guarantees worker safety in all the environments where wearing PPE is mandatory.
Alessia Saggese, Co-Owner of A.I. Tech, comments, “One of the most interesting use cases we are working on is the design of a smart pole equipped with a camera and a safety light. The camera will act as an intelligent sensor using the video analytics application based on deep neural networks to detect the presence of people and determine whether or not they are wearing personal protective equipment (PPE).
The video analytics software will run directly on board the camera without transmitting the video stream to a server or the cloud. If the app detects that a worker is not properly wearing a PPE, the worker is informed in real time, and the light is switched on.
“This type of solution has several benefits:
- It is plug-and-play and easy to move and install, this is important for temporary worksites, like those over the streets or the highways;
- The solution is privacy compliant because the stream does not leave the device and we only send notifications that cannot be used to identify the workers, moreover, the device is more robust w.r.t. cyberattacks because it does not need a connection to the cloud;
- The total cost of the solution is related only to the device and the software without the needs to pay cloud services or to buy external servers.”
PPE are products that the user can wear or hold to protect against risks either at work, at home, or while engaging in leisure activities. Statistics on fatal and major work accidents underline the importance of protection and prevention, for which personal protective equipment plays an important role.
Saggese shares an example: “In Italy, legislation regarding worker safety (Testo Unico sulla Sicurezza) establishes how to guarantee safety based on the company core business. It also prescribes which PPEs are mandatory for workers to prevent accidents and deaths at work. If the workers neglect to wear the required PPE, the employer’s responsibility is to monitor and avoid workers’ disregard of the regulation. Thus, in Italy, this solution is of great help to the employers as they can have continuous monitoring of working areas, especially riskier ones. In Europe, there are different directives and guidelines for the companies to guarantee workers’ safety through PPE.”
Over the years, A.I. Tech has developed products that focus on building security. However, since the global pandemic, the company started working on solutions for people’s safety, like AI-Crowd-DEEP to monitor overcrowding situations and social distances.
Saggese concludes, “Today, people are more likely to accept video analytics solutions even in the workplaces, especially if these solutions respect privacy and can effectively guarantee their safety. A good example is A.I. Tech products that allow for processing the stream directly on board a smart camera without sending data to external servers or to cloud services.
“In addition, construction sites and manufacturing industries have fully resumed their activities after the COVID pause, and there is a strong demand for innovative solutions suitable for these work environments. For this reason, and also guided by a POC project, we decided to invest in this new video analytics solution to enter this growing market. To give some context related to Italy, reports of accidents in the workplace increased by 27% from 2019 to 2020 and the same trend is expected in 2022.”
A.I. PPE finalist for the Analytics and software innovation category.
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