DIGITAL LIFE

Touchless technologies for the post-covid-19 world

A rather automatic attitude - pressing the button to open the supermarket parking gate - became, in the post-coronavirus world, a complex operation. Do what? Find a piece of paper not to touch where several possibly contaminated fingers have passed or dispense with protection and smear your hands with gel alcohol soon after? To avoid this dilemma, supermarket chains have begun to replace buttons with approach technologies, which exclude touch. It is an example of technological choices - sometimes simple and cheap, other expensive and complex - that companies will have to make from now on.
The race to adopt new technologies will intensify as deaths from coronavirus in Brazil reach new peaks, says Heitor Salvador, president of corporate security company SegurPro. Among the projects in progress, says the executive, are simple solutions, such as adapting old security cameras to measure distance between employees, until replacing entire digital identification systems with facial recognition technologies. He ensures that it is possible to program the cameras to recognize people even when they wear masks to protect themselves from the covid-19.

Investments already made
Among the companies that have already invested in touchless technologies are Petrobras and Vale. The mining company acquired thermal cameras capable of identifying, in a group of workers starting a shift in a mine, an individual with a fever. The equipment is part of a batch of 86 thermal cameras purchased for R$ 7.5 million(local currency). Cameras are able to identify temperature variations - and color the silhouette of the potentially sick employee.
Petrobras works on different fronts. It installed thermal cameras - simpler models that show variations in temperature by professionals who pass, one by one, through a turnstile - and works on several fronts to increase social distance, especially on production platforms, where space is limited. The covid-19 infection rate in these environments is monitored by the Public Ministry of Labor (MPT), as Estadão's report showed yesterday.
According to Juliano Dantas, manager of the research center at the state-owned company (Cenpes), touchless technology - or low touch, in English - is a “central concern”. The company analyzes its processes to prevent surfaces from being touched by a large number of people. "It starts with the turnstiles," says Dantas. Without spending too much, it is also possible to increase surveillance of certain behaviors, such as clusters of employees. "A camera can win new software and be 'trained' to set off an alarm to disperse people," he explains.

Digital x face
As Salvador, from SegurPro recalls, low touch alternatives will also have to be adopted from the “out door” and will influence the relationship between business and customers. This is the case of the aforementioned parking gates and other service points, such as payment totems and bank ATMs. According to a source heard by Estadão, a large Brazilian bank is already studying changing the identification of the account holder from fingerprint to facial identification.
The Japanese technology company NEC already adopts, at its headquarters in São Paulo, a facial identification system in which workers and visitors are identified by a camera, which allows access to the building, without the need to touch a badge - and, almost always, the hand - on a surface for collective use. SegurPro, on the other hand, offers a virtual ordinance in which the person stands in front of a screen and only shows the document to a doorman who works remotely, at a central office. By “reading” the document's photo, the solution is able to release the visitor or not.

Human factor
Modifying processes depends, of course, on the “human factor”. The Volkswagen plant in ABC Paulista should resume activities on the 18th of this month. To ensure compliance with security measures, employees will act as monitors and separate agglomerations. “Everyone will have to respect it. Let's forget about hierarchies. The monitor will be able to attract the attention of anyone, even me, ”said Pablo Di Si, president of Volkswagen in Latin America, during the Economics in Quarantine interview series last week.
And there will always be ways to circumvent rules, warns Leonardo Fonseca Netto, director of NEC. The camera that identifies feverish workers, for example, is only able to measure the temperature at the moment when filming the person. "I am not against the solution, but if the person has taken an antipyretic hours earlier and the temperature is temporarily normal, the camera will not identify anything", he ponders. It is proof that technology can go far, but it is not able to guarantee that humans develop certain qualities. In this case, the sense of common good.

Fernando Scheller-Brazil