In yet another amazing initiative to take India’s battle against coronavirus a notch up, the Indian Railways has come up with Captain Arjun. An artificial intelligence-based robot, Captain Arjun has been deployed at the Pune station with the aim of enhancing passenger safety at the railway station amid the growing cases of COVID-19 across the nation.
The robot shall be responsible for the conduction of various safety measures that are to be undertaken by the railway authorities. It will be focusing on the thermal scanning of the passengers, elaborating upon the COVID-19b prevention measures to be undertaken by the passengers, and recording abnormal or suspicious activity in the surroundings & people.
Alok Bohra DIG, RPF, Central Railway said “The high infection rates among multiple segments of people across the world have hampered efforts to tackle COVID-19 pandemic that prompted us to consider robotic screening. Captain ARJUN can be deployed for multiple uses, and it is an effective element in station access control and will augment the station security plan.”
While talking about the functions and specifications of the robot, an RPF official said, “Captain Arjun is equipped with a motion sensor, a ‘Pan, Tilt, Zoom’ (PTZ) camera, and a dome camera. The cameras use artificial intelligence algorithms to track suspicious activities and also have an inbuilt siren system.”
“There is also inbuilt internal storage for recording, in case of network failure. The robot can conduct thermal screening and recording temperature in a digital display panel with a response time of 0.5 seconds. If any person’s temperature is more than the reference range an ‘abnormal’ automatic alarm will go off,” he further added to his statement.
The development of one such robot costs about ₹70,000 and uses a two-way communication model. It will not only be responsible for screening and educating the passengers, but will also act as a sanitizer and mask dispenser while mopping and sanitizing the floor.
The robot has been brought in action with the aim of reducing human interaction between the railway staff and passengers to prevent any further spread of the COVID-19 virus.