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Safe: Set maximum capacity for any room, floor, or building

density.io

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Re: Safe: Set maximum capacity for any room, floor, or building

#21

Post by city41 »

_bxg1 wrote: post #3

Interesting, but I'm skeptical it could make some semblance of normal life "safe" purely through occupancy counts. It also seems like a likely very expensive solution to something that could be solved with a handheld clicker. Corporate offices might splurge for it, but they're also more likely to just have people working from home.

The name bothers me a bit. Social distancing does not make us “safe” just “safer”. It worries me that people might think things like masks and possibly this tool are more effective than they actually are and become complacent.

Re: Safe: Set maximum capacity for any room, floor, or building

#22

Post by vorpalhex »

afar wrote: post #19
pbourke wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off - this is really neat, especially the focus on privacy and the use of AI at the edge. It seems like the occupancy limit problem for small rooms is much more challenging than the building-density problem, since a single error could DOS the room. How do you account for that?

Def. We call that the OB1 problem (off-by-one). If either event detection (did something happen) or event classification (entry or entrance) is wrong, you can be off the whole day. To solve that, we have a different approach / non-threshold approach for boolean occupancy. Not implemented here.

What data does the sensor collect? How visible is the data it sends back to the platform?

Re: Safe: Set maximum capacity for any room, floor, or building

#23

Post by afar »

vorpalhex wrote: post #22
afar wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Def. We call that the OB1 problem (off-by-one). If either event detection (did something happen) or event classification (entry or entrance) is wrong, you can be off the whole day. To solve that, we have a different approach / non-threshold approach for boolean occupancy. Not implemented here.

What data does the sensor collect? How visible is the data it sends back to the platform?

It's a custom sensor in the lidar family. Uses infrared lasers as illumination and generates depth data. Essentially millions of height values. When depth is rendered to be human legible it look looks like greyscale silhouettes (dark grey is far away, lighter gray is nearer). Sensor processes those values on the edge and published +1/-1 and telemetry data (system health).

Re: Safe: Set maximum capacity for any room, floor, or building

#24

Post by afar »

_bxg1 wrote: post #16
piniondna wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people think that shooting down ideas makes them sound intelligent and “in the know”, but in reality it just makes you sound rigid and not creative enough to see the merit in a idea. This seems to be a common attitude on HN, but it’s less than useful. Genuine critical thinking is great... dogmatic cynicism is useless.

I think people think that criticizing others by over-applying perceived HN tropes makes them sound intelligent and "in the know". I wasn't shooting it down, I was just expressing skepticism toward the complexity of the solution and opening it up for wider discussion.

Skepticism on this stuff is valid. If we're going to distribute large scale infrastructure that measures human movement we ought to be critical of it. So many systems purport to work but don't. Others are way over engineered. And a lot market as if they're sensors when they're really just cameras taking pictures of behavior.

Re: Safe: Set maximum capacity for any room, floor, or building

#25

Post by afar »

city41 wrote: post #21
_bxg1 wrote: post #3

Interesting, but I'm skeptical it could make some semblance of normal life "safe" purely through occupancy counts. It also seems like a likely very expensive solution to something that could be solved with a handheld clicker. Corporate offices might splurge for it, but they're also more likely to just have people working from home.

The name bothers me a bit. Social distancing does not make us “safe” just “safer”. It worries me that people might think things like masks and possibly this tool are more effective than they actually are and become complacent.

It's definitely going to take a village of tools and methods. Don't think it will make it more dangerous, though.

Re: Safe: Set maximum capacity for any room, floor, or building

#26

Post by jedberg »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #15

I think it could work. Heavens know, I will now have to actively avoid places that are not at least careful about how they reopen. I am mildly concerned about people, who see doing the opposite as a political expression, but some things cannot be helped.

> I am mildly concerned about people, who see doing the opposite as a political expression

Those people are a very small but vocal minority, being amplified by social media.

All the data says that most people are complying with safe practices, even when their governments aren't requiring it.

Re: Safe: Set maximum capacity for any room, floor, or building

#27

Post by afar »

_bxg1 wrote: post #17
afar wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nets out to ~$85/mo. For a small place, that's substantially less expensive than staffing it full time. disclosure: co-founder here.

I didn't see the pricing; that's more affordable than I would've thought, especially with the rent-instead-of-buy model.

In an ideal world, we just give this stuff away and the applications on the platform become the primary value. Some people are open to that others are less used to having a widget and not owning it. Will take time.

Re: Safe: Set maximum capacity for any room, floor, or building

#29

Post by alkqp10 »

piniondna wrote: post #5
_bxg1 wrote: post #3

Interesting, but I'm skeptical it could make some semblance of normal life "safe" purely through occupancy counts. It also seems like a likely very expensive solution to something that could be solved with a handheld clicker. Corporate offices might splurge for it, but they're also more likely to just have people working from home.

I think people think that shooting down ideas makes them sound intelligent and “in the know”, but in reality it just makes you sound rigid and not creative enough to see the merit in a idea. This seems to be a common attitude on HN, but it’s less than useful. Genuine critical thinking is great... dogmatic cynicism is useless.

It is not creative to count the number of people in a room.
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