A Vision-based Social Distancing and Critical Density Detection System for COVID-19

TL;DR

This paper presents an AI-based, privacy-preserving real-time social distancing and density detection system using monocular cameras, capable of warning violations and controlling inflow without recording personal data.

Contribution

It introduces a novel ethical AI system for social distancing monitoring that does not record data, avoids targeting individuals, and is open-source.

Findings

Effective real-time detection of social distancing violations

Successful control of social density through system alerts

Open-source implementation ready for deployment

Abstract

Social distancing has been proven as an effective measure against the spread of the infectious COronaVIrus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, individuals are not used to tracking the required 6-feet (2-meters) distance between themselves and their surroundings. An active surveillance system capable of detecting distances between individuals and warning them can slow down the spread of the deadly disease. Furthermore, measuring social density in a region of interest (ROI) and modulating inflow can decrease social distancing violation occurrence chance. On the other hand, recording data and labeling individuals who do not follow the measures will breach individuals' rights in free-societies. Here we propose an Artificial Intelligence (AI) based real-time social distancing detection and warning system considering four important ethical factors: (1) the system should never record/cache data, (2) the warnings should not target the individuals, (3) no human supervisor should be in the detection/warning loop, and (4) the code should be open-source and accessible to the public. Against this backdrop, we propose using a monocular camera and deep learning-based real-time object detectors to measure social distancing. If a violation is detected, a non-intrusive audio-visual warning signal is emitted without targeting the individual who breached the social distancing measure. Also, if the social density is over a critical value, the system sends a control signal to modulate inflow into the ROI. We tested the proposed method across real-world datasets to measure its generality and performance. The proposed method is ready for deployment, and our code is open-sourced.