MUSCAT: Dr Ahmed al Maashri and his team from the College of Engineering at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) have invented a drone-based system equipped with artificial intelligence technology for detecting suspected Covid-19 cases remotely.
The team has developed a prototype cable of detecting Covid-19 symptoms from a distance between 10 to 15 metres, and has passed field tests conducted under varying conditions such as the drone altitude, location and projection angles.
The project is funded by the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, as part of a research programme aimed at fighting Covid-19 pandemic.
The lead researcher,
Dr Ahmed al Maashri, said that the system can measure the temperatures of several people at a time with high accuracy through the method of self-calibration of thermal information. It can measure body temperature for persons wearing face masks as well as detect symptoms such as cough and sneezing with high accuracy. The system sends an alarm in the event of detecting a suspected Covid-19 case.
“We have collected two databases one for the remote detecting of body temperature and the other for identifying symptoms associated with Covid-19. Those databases can also be utilised by similar projects’’, Al Maashri said, noting that the project was aimed at utilising thermal imaging to calculate body temperature as well as the artificial intelligence for detecting Covid-19 symptoms.
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