HP Inc., Singapore trials artificial intelligence (AI) solution for Social Distancing in its manufacturing facility

(By HP Inc: Jia Xin, Dishank Bhan, Pandian Ganesan, Gek Kiang Ang, AI Singapore: Ang Liyi, Dr Daniel Ng, Edmund Teo, Jway Jin Jun, Kow Yong Sheng, Ngui Seng Wee, Sidney Tio, Sun Yikang, Tan Di Wei, Tan Juan Boon)

As organizations start to make the journey back to work with the end of the Circuit Breaker in Singapore, many manufacturing companies are looking for ways to restart operations. The added challenge is the need to prioritize employees’ well-being while being compliant to government guidelines on health and safety in the workplace.

HP Inc., a global technology leader and high-tech manufacturer in Singapore, is no exception. As a company that runs multiple manufacturing sites in Singapore that prioritizes the well-being of its manufacturing employees, HP was looking for a solution that could help employees ensure they kept to safe distancing rules when on the factory floor.

In collaboration with AI Singapore (AISG), the SMARC team at HP is now leveraging AISG’s FinePose product to co-develop a trial solution to encourage physical distancing on the factory floors. This addresses a challenge where employees when working on production floors, do inevitably interact or walk past each other.

“Ensuring the health and safety of our people on the factory floor is of utmost importance. Our collaboration with AISG helps to equip our employees with technology to promote self-regulation and to encourage social distancing behaviours as we return to work in this new normal.”

– Jamie Neo, Director of Operations, HP Inc., Singapore

The co-development of a solution for the purpose of safe distancing saw HP and AISG teams working together and sharing knowledge and expertise to create an analytics system that consisted of: (i) a real-time component and (ii) a post-processing component.

The real-time component leverages IoT technologies implemented through a real-time camera feed and a video display. Should workers on the production floor come too close to one another, virtual markers in the camera feed turn from green to red, and the system issues a verbal warning to remind employees to adhere to social distancing measures.

The data collected allows HP management teams to further improve workflows and human traffic in different parts of the production area to ensure safe and healthy working environments for its employees.

“We hope that FinePose will be able to contribute to the fight against COVID-19. We are pleased to work with HP Singapore on this trial and believe FinePose will help many other companies safely restart their key operations.”

– Laurence Liew, Director of AI Innovation, AI Singapore