Poster: Safe Gate - IoT system to support sanitary measures to combat COVID-19

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic crisis raised public health attention closer to our global society's demands. The disease proliferation occurs typically by droplet transmission, by being close to an infected person. Social distancing, a natural solution, is not always applicable to everyday needs, such as in the public transportation system, which is a space highly susceptible to viral proliferation. A set of ways to reduce proliferation in these infrastructures is by reinforcing facial masks usage, restraining symptomatic users, and reducing physical contact with public devices. Safe Gate, an Internet of Things (IoT) solution to enforce containment measures for disease proliferation, is proposed in this paper. This IoT solution is based on a network of edge computing devices used to control access to the entrance gate of the stations. The edge devices service samples an user's temperature and facial image to verify that body temperature is within normal bounds and the user is correctly wearing a face mask. The system is contact-free and does not require an active operator, with no personal data stored, preserving privacy. Additionally, it minimizes personnel involvement with passengers, ensuring staff protection. The research question is whether the solution with two levels of facial recognition using cognitive edge computing will meet the requirements of a real system. In addition to this question, a queuing model to verify the feasibility of the solution is presented and evaluates the operational impact on a real transportation system. © 2021 ACM.