Local company Granule Holdings has started distributing smart helmets to monitor people for high temperatures in the fight again Covid-19.

The KC N901 smart helmet is able to scan the temperatures of up to 200 people every minute and has been well received by authorities in China, Italy, the Netherlands and Dubai.

The device enables the mass screening of people, which could be helpful as more South Africans return to work and engage in more economic activities when the country moves to a Level 3 lockdown.

The device also keeps a history of the individuals scanned, while it incorporates artificial intelligence (AI) to recognise faces and licence plates, making it efficient and safe to use for screening large public areas.

Granule founder and CEO Jeremy Capouya explains that the KC N901 smart helmet comes equipped with an advanced reduced instruction set computing machines processor, an augmented reality display screen, an infrared camera for night use, as well as a visible light camera for daytime use.

The wearer can detect the temperature, within 0.3 °C accuracy, of people standing about two metres from the wearer.

The device is designed to work offline, and all data is stored on the helmet itself, which has a 64 GB internal memory.

The AI capabilities support offline face and licence plate recognition. Face recognition allows the device to recognise a person’s face and pull up their personal information from its database, making it suitable for use at airports, in the banking sector, at mining sites and in manufacturing plants.

With number plate recognition, the wearer can identify unauthorised vehicles recorded in its database.

Bluetooth and WiFi capability make the data easily transferable at a later stage.

The device also boasts AI-driven three-dimensional barcode recognition and QR code identification to automatically record personal temperature information into the smart helmet’s database in real time, allowing paperless data logging.

The KC N901 smart helmet runs off the Windows and Android operating systems. The helmet also comes with a smartwatch, which can run all functions of the helmet, as required by the user.

“The helmets need less time and contact than traditional temperature screening products and thermometers and can measure temperatures from 5 m away. An alert is triggered if a fever is detected.

“It is especially crucial at this time – when there is an urgent need to resume economic activity – that we put in place whatever measures we can to take the pressure off our healthcare system and help stop the spread of Covid-19,” notes Capouya.