Thursday 2 July 2020

Enhancing Workplace Health & Safety Using Computer Vision

Subhash Sharma 


Although health and safety at workplaces have improved over the years, yet the UK continues to have a large number of workplace accidents. The number of accidents resulting in injury, or in some cases, even death is quite high. Many of these accidents can be avoided, and AI-based computer vision can play a significant role in cutting down these accidents. 
Health and Safety Statistics. Key figures for Great Britain (2018/19)
  • 1.4 million working people suffering from a work-related illness
  • 2,526 mesothelioma deaths due to past asbestos exposures (2017)
  • 147 workers killed at work
  • 581,000 working people sustaining an injury at work according to the Labour Force Survey
  • 69,208 injuries to employees reported under RIDDOR
  • 28.2 million working days lost due to work-related illness and workplace injury
  • £15 billion estimated costs of injuries and ill health from current working conditions (2017/18)

( Source: https://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/ )
Forklifts alone account for 1,300 UK employees being hospitalised each year (That’s 5 UK workers each workday!) with serious injuries due to these accidents. Unfortunately, that number is rising as there is a significant growth in e-commerce and warehouses across the UK. 

Use of AI-based computer vision for optimising workplace health and safety in the UK.
Our Computer Vision product, IRIS, is an AI-based computer vision solution to track and predict workplace accidents and then prevent them from happening. The existing use cases include:
  • Fork Lift Safety, Predicting and Prevention of Fork Lift accidents.
  • Use of Lifting Equipment
  • Work at Height
  • Fire & Thermal injuries and accidents
  • Machine Guarding
  • Manual Handling
  • Monitoring near misses and reporting near misses & accidents in real-time
  • Monitoring Use of PPE

IRIS is an enterprise computer vision solution. The product is currently deployed at many customer sites including Fortune 500 companies. The AI solution sits on the top of existing CCTV infrastructure. It is very cost-effective and can be deployed quickly either at a customer site or through the cloud.