Lt. General HH Sheikh Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior approved the smart helmets technology for use by all police force bodies at the countrywide level. This aims to automatically detect possible cases of coronavirus in public places.
The Ministry of Interior keenness to put in place the best modern technologies, expand areas of innovation, and adopt state-of-the-art products to implement its strategy and uphold the UAE’s preventive measures and instructions to curb the spread of Covid-19.
The idea of the smart helmet was first proposed by the MoI’s Innovation Team. The helmet weighs 1kg and is made of carbon fiber, a lightweight solid material. It is also fitted with several infrared cameras that are harmless to humans.
The new smart helmet underwent safety checks to ensure its safety for users, whether Civil Defense personnel or National Ambulance paramedics. The helmet, to be used by specialist police teams all over the UAE, is designed to monitor the public and detect suspected Covid-19 cases, and it is completely safe for both users and the general public.
The helmet allows reading a number of vital signs within 5 meters, thus facilitating the work done by field patrols by taking the required readings and recognizing the persons in question. Data is then shared instantly with the Ministry's Central Operations Room to generate an immediate report which helps patrols make the appropriate decisions. The new helmets can also read people's temperature under different climatic conditions and in the open air.
That normal body temperature readings are in the range of 36.3 to 37.3, and therefore, the helmet, by detecting temperature, can identify a key symptom of suspected Covid-19 cases. If the suspected case shows all the symptoms, the person will be rushed to hospital to receive the necessary medical care.
The smart helmet is designed to be used both indoors and outdoors and can easily handle huge crowds by scanning the entire area within screen range, thus providing all readings and results of the thermal scan and QR codes.
The smart helmet statements, comes with lots of features, including the ability to create and read QR codes, in addition to its thermal cameras and sensors which help the helmet initiate the facial recognition process. By storing facial recognition results in its database, the helmet can detect the faces of Covid-19 confirmed or suspected cases. The helmet is fitted with a system that can recognize and read the face ID to know whether the person has any special medical condition stored through a smart code on his/her smartphone. The helmet, according to Al Marzouqi, can further read the data stored on the phone through a barcode and recognize number plates and store all collected data on its memory.