GM Creates And Shares New Workplace Safety Technologies – Pulse 2.0

General Motors Company (NYSE: GM) announced it has developed new technology to aid workplace safety during the COVID-19 pandemic. And the company is sharing its innovations with the world for potential use in job sites as diverse as manufacturing plants, offices, or even schools. The new technologies include an automated kiosk for temperature scanning and software for contact tracing and a mobile app for touchless printing.

While developing to aid the companys workplace protocols, GM made these tools available to the public for potential use in any workplace, school, or facility. GMs in-house software developers developed solutions aimed at helping employees return to work with more confidence, streamlining, and improving workplace safety protocols.

Thermal Scanning Kiosk

At GM workplaces and many other kinds of facilities today, safety protocols call for an entry process that includes a temperature evaluation, which is normally administered by another worker. GM developed new software code that integrates the operation of an infrared thermal camera with a computer and monitor, automating and streamlining the entire process.

Utilizing open-source code from the OpenCV project, the system automatically detects when someone has stepped in front of the camera and checks for an elevated skin temperature, indicating it is either safe to proceed or the entrant needs further evaluation. And the process can take as little as 1-2 seconds, thus relieving bottlenecks at workplace entry points and reducing physical contact between workers. The scanning is also effective when the worker is wearing a mask or face covering.

Kiosks are in use at a number of GM offices and plants acrossthe United Statesand will expand to other global locations soon. Even though the actual kiosk GM built is for its own facilities, the innovation that makes it work can be applied in many other kinds of workplaces. And the software is available to help any workplace or facility with similar entry scanning processes.

Workplace Contact Tracing

Developers around the world are designing technology solutions to improve contact tracing. GM had made significant improvements to Covid Watch, which is an open-source contact tracing application by adding real-time social distance alerts, boosting performance on both iOS and Android devices and adding support for Bluetooth beacons. And GM will release its open-source software soon, helping developers worldwide who are collaborating on open-source solutions to aid contact tracing.

GM is testing a mobile app that would create a record for the employee, listing other users with whom he or she has been in contact. And it can help medical staff reach employees that had contact with a worker testing positive for COVID-19 while maintaining privacy and security. The app also constantly computes the physical distance between users and can send an alert to help encourage safe behavior. GM is planning a pilot to test the application soon.

Touchless Print

The new Touchless Print mobile web application now enables employees to print documents without touching the printers control panel, which instead uses a QR code scanned through the employees mobile phone. This process is not only safer, but very quick and extremely simple.

This app is in use now at GM facilities worldwide for iOS and Android devices and exclusive to HP printers. And the open-source software for the app was released earlier this month.

These innovations are considered the latest in a series of pandemic-response actions from the company, including production of critical care ventilators and personal protective equipment like masks, face shields and N95 respirators.

KEY QUOTES:

We developed an extensive playbook for a safe return to work for our employees, and were seeing very good success. As we implemented the protocols, GM software developers started to work on how technology could make the process smoother and more precise.

GM medical director Dr.Jeffery Hess

We had to respond quickly to the challenges the COVID-19 pandemic created for our workforce. Our teams collaborated online with experts around the world to quickly innovate and support the safe return of our employees to the workplace. We know many of these challenges affect others globally. We felt it important to share our innovation so other companies, organizations, and institutions could benefit from our experience.

GM executive vice president and chief information officer Randy Mott

We believe our application advances the state of the art when it comes to mobile apps for contact tracing, which is the subject of massive software development efforts across multiple industries today.

Tony Bolton, GM chief information officer of Global Telecommunications and End-User Services

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GM Creates And Shares New Workplace Safety Technologies - Pulse 2.0