County Manufacturing Meeting - Discussions about virus and social distancing.

Rob S.

Member
Join Date
Sep 2008
Location
Maryland
Posts
739
Good Afternoon,

Every 2 months we have a county wide Manufacturing Roundtable at a local college , but now it’s a Zoom conference now . We shared how we are dealing with Covid 19 in our plants , labor , economy, etc.

The subject came up about social distancing in our plants . During our meeting I was brainstorming about how we could monitor social distancing thru automation . I was thinking , what about vision system such had a Cognex Insight with a wide lense , to set up a grid , that a certain amount of people can be in a certain square foot area . Probably in the ceiling .

I know it’s a crazy idea , LOL .

Thanks so much .
Have a good weekend .
 
It would be cheaper to use the AI algorithm of e.g. HikVision built into the NVR or a Davantis box. That's assuming there's IP camera's covering the manufacturing floor.
 
This is not a dig on Rob. How bout we just use a little logical thinking? Staying off my soapbox and going to keep this short. Round here half the hospital staff is laid off, there’s no patients. You tell me if that seems like we, as a whole, are thinking logically. It’s a serious thing, but it’s not “broken arrow” and never has been.
 
If I recall, I read about a company that was embdedding RTLS chips inside safety helmets in chemical plants, so they could be more sure that everybody was out.


I guess the same strategy might work here, although you'd probably need the trackers at a very high accuracy for 6 feet to be meaningful, which obviously increases the cost.
 
I remember seeing a Ted talk about multiple quad-copter drones that maintain formation flying by keeping track of each other via cameras*. So a 360deg-FOV camera on every helmet with an earpiece screaming "social distancing violation on your six!" does not seem that it would be outrageously difficult. ;)



Talk about Big Brother. ;)


The groovy bit was the no-spill loop with a half-full wine glass, or while balancing a stick on top of the quad-copter. I imagine it's similar to VFD technology, where we have chips fast enough to solve the differential equations of a drives' internals in real-time, which chips were not available when those equations were derived in the 1960s (that's my understanding anyway; feel free to correct me).
 
Last edited:
The groovy bit was the no-spill loop with a half-full wine glass, or while balancing a stick on top of the quad-copter. I imagine it's similar to VFD technology, where we have chips fast enough to solve the differential equations of a drives' internals in real-time, which chips were not available when those equations were derived in the 1960s (that's my understanding anyway; feel free to correct me).

Don't think FPGA's were out in the 60's
 
I had a vendor chatting w/ me about that recently, Their solution involved wearable BLE devices that detected the other devices and chirpped at you if you were getting too close for too long.
 
For those of you that work @ bigger companies, where there is a wireless network for the cell phones? They totally know where that phone is, give or take, to 20-30feet. Not quite personal space range, but there's a lot of built in monitoring between wireless APs that gets used for mapping. Handy esp for the floor wireless devices like tablet/scanner guns, helps to find the general area they got left in.
 
Next you will proposing the embedded chip so they can track you everywhere
No need for time clock the chip will log you i and out at the door

i may be old school but if you can't rust your people then it's time to replace them with people that you can trust.
having big brother looking over you shoulder is no way to live, in fact i would say it's not living
 
How about:::

One designated "Safety" person armed with a water gun (super soaker for proper distance) walking around lightly squirting personnel who break the Covid rules...
:)
 

Similar Topics

Good Evening , In my hometown we have a Manufacturing Group that gets together once every 2 months to discuss labor issues , the economy ...
Replies
23
Views
7,703
Seminole County is looking for an Industrial Programmer with some experience to perform jobs for both water and waste water facilities. All...
Replies
2
Views
2,112
Anybody working in the vicinity of the DuPage county airport? I start Monday 9/25/06 across the street and wondered if there was anyone else...
Replies
16
Views
4,536
Good Morning , I imagine all manufactures are having similar problems. The lack of Maintenance Technicians ( Mechanics ) . Could you share...
Replies
22
Views
3,599
GitHub Link: https://github.com/Automation-Standard/Open-Industry-Project This is a little side project I've been working on that I felt would be...
Replies
14
Views
3,326
Back
Top Bottom