The Cyberabad Police on Thursday tested out drones for surveillance and to enforce the lockdown to stop the spread of COVID-19.
Among the drones tested were surveillance cameras, radiometric thermal imaging sensor and sky speaker. Telangana police officials have been caught off guard by people violating the curfew norms and loitering on streets.
“The radiometric thermal imaging sensor can get accurate temperature of a human body when it is 10-15 metres from the site. The other sky speaker mounted on a drone can broadcast an announcement that can be heard in a radius of one kilometre,” said G. Naveen of Cyient Technologies, which provided the technology for the police. Health officials have been using thermal scanners to find the body temperature of suspected patients affected by COVID-19.
“The surveillance drone camera has a 30X optical zoom and 6X digital zoom giving it a capacity for 180X enhancement of an image,” informed Mr. Naveen. Commercially, similar drones are deployed to check the safety of wind turbines and cellphone towers.
China, which was first impacted by COVID-19, has used similar drones to track people who have been quarantined in the country along with other surveillance tools like CCTV cameras, location data from cellphones and credit card transaction information. Other countries like Singapore and South Korea have also deployed similar technologies to enforce quarantine norms among their citizens.
On Wednesday, Health Minister Eatala Rajendar tweeted: “Govt of Telangana to track over 25,000 people placed under home quarantine by tracking their Geo location in Realtime with the help of COVID-19 monitoring system (sic).” The Centre has also launched an app called AarogyaSetu developed by the National Informatics Centre that uses device location and bluetooth connectivity to track people.
