Beijing, February 7, 2020 – Today, Megvii Technology Limited (“Megvii” or the “Company”) announced that it has deployed temperature detection solution at public spaces in Haidian, Beijing, in order to contribute to the fight against the novel coronavirus outbreak. Disease control and public health experts have warned that the next 7 to 10 days will be critical in ongoing efforts to contain the novel coronavirus, as people return to work following the Lunar New Year holiday. All public spaces in major cities across China are implementing more stringent prevention and containment measures, led by body temperature detection. A major challenge is how to efficiently detect high body temperatures without close physical contact.

Rising to the challenge of safeguarding cities with AI

Megvii has assembled a team of nearly 100 R&D staff to devise and implement an efficient temperature detection system, in collaboration with the management committee of Zhongguancun Science City and the Haidian district government, as well as support from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology and Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission.

Megvii’s R&D team proposed an innovative AI-enabled temperature detection solution that integrates body detection, face detection and dual sensing via infrared cameras and visible light. The system is designed to help staff working at locations with high-density passenger flows, such as train stations, bus stations, railway stations and airports, to swiftly identify people who may have elevated body temperatures. Those people are then located in the crowd using available body and facial information (please note this is not to be confused with personal identity verification). This allows staff to complete all body temperature screenings without close physical contact, while reducing potential physical transmission of the coronavirus and optimizing passenger flow.

After an extensive testing and research process, Megvii’s AI-enabled temperature detection system was first deployed at the Government Service Hall in Haidian District and one subway station on February 4.  

Reducing chances of physical transmissions; a single system supporting up to 16 camera feeds 

Megvii’s AI-enabled temperature detection system can accurately detect elevated body temperature at distances greater than 3 meters and amid considerable passenger traffic. The system has proven to be more efficient and effective than hand-held thermometers and other traditional fever screening systems.

Utilizing an optimized detection model, the system can accurately detect and flag high body temperature even when people are wearing masks, hats, or cover their faces with other items. The temperature deviation of a given crowd detected is within ±0.3^oC. People do not need to remove their masks and other protective devices or queue up for the temperature checks, further enhancing safety and optimizing passenger flow at public spaces.

Once someone with a high body temperature has been identified, a pre-set warning system is triggered, allowing a staff member to approach the person in question for manual secondary screening. By combining Megvii’s proprietary body ReID detection and search technology, the system can help staff quickly locate those persons with high body temperatures for additional checking.

Researchers from Megvii said the system can simultaneously check the body temperatures of 15 people every second, while supporting up to 16 camera feeds, enough to cover a subway station entrance. Moreover, assisted by this AI system, each subway entrance will require at a minimum only one on-site staff to monitor the pre-set warning system and administer additional checks on passengers with high body temperatures. This will significantly reduce the risk of physical transmissions to on-site staff.   

About Megvii Technology Limited

Megvii is a world-class AI company with core competencies in deep learning. Founded in Beijing in 2011 by Yin Qi, Tang Wenbin and Yang Mu, three Tsinghua University graduates who studied under the Turing-prize winning Chinese computer scientist and computational theorist Andrew Chi-Chih Yao, Megvii is a pioneer in applying AI technology and computer vision algorithms to Internet of Things (IoT) use cases. The Company’s mission is to power humanity with AI. 

Megvii’s first commercialized AI product was a facial recognition solution. The Company has developed its proprietary deep learning framework Brain++, which functions as a unified underlying architecture and provides critical support tailored for the Company’s algorithm training and model improvement processes. 

Leveraging its strong software-hardware integration capabilities, Megvii offers full stack solutions to its customers, and has achieved leading positions in several key vertical markets, including personal IoT, city IoT and supply chain IoT. Megvii is building an AI infrastructure to connect and empower various IoT devices, to solve real life problems and pain points encountered by customers in sectors including fintech, transportation, logistics and others. Megvii is dedicated to helping customers achieve specific goals such as user authentication and fraud reduction, traffic optimization, and labor efficiency gains. 

Headquartered in Beijing with over 2,000 employees, Megvii maintains four research and development centers in China. 

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