A New UAV-Based Social Distance Detector for COVID-19 Outbreaks Reduction, Using IoT, Computer Vision and Deep Learning Technologies

Abstract

Nowadays, we are living in a dangerous environment and our health system is under the threatened causes of Covid19 and other diseases. The people who are close together are more threatened by different viruses, especially Covid19. In addition, limiting the physical distance between people helps minimize the risk of the virus spreading. For this reason, we created a smart system to detect violated social distance in public areas as markets and streets. In the proposed system, the algorithm for people detection uses a pre-existing deep learning model and computer vision techniques to determine the distances between humans. The detection model uses bounding box information to identify persons. The identified bounding box centroid's pairwise distances of people are calculated using the Euclidean distance. Also, we used jetson nano platform to implement a low-cost embedded system and IoT techniques to send the images and notifications to the nearest police station to apply forfeit when it detects people’s congestion in a specific area. Lastly, the suggested system has the capability to assist decrease the intensity of the spread of COVID-19 and other diseases by identifying violated social distance measures and notifying the owner of the system. Using the transformation matrix and accurate pedestrian detection, the process of detecting social distances between individuals may be achieved great confidence. Experiments show that CNN-based object detectors with our suggested social distancing algorithm provide reasonable accuracy for monitoring social distancing in public places, as well.