These smart glasses fight COVID-19 by measuring other peoples' temperatures

Technology is doing its best to become the hero in the whole coronavirus saga. Darned if Apple and Google haven't shaken hands and decided to team up to provide contact tracing in an attempt to quash the spread of the deadly virus. And as Apple used to say, there's an app for that. At least there will be now that developers have an API to use to build the necessary apps needed to make the plan work for both iOS and Android users.

Now, according to TechCrunch, a startup firm out of Hangzhou China named Rokid has developed the perfect pair of glasses for the COVID-19 era. These glasses measure other people's temperatures on the fly. The so-called T1 Thermal Glasses, which took only two weeks to develop, have sold over 1,000 pairs to governments, businesses, and schools in China. The specs are equipped with an infrared sensor and a 12MP camera which allows them to read other people's glasses. They are powered by a Qualcomm CPU.

Rokid Vice President Xiang Wenjie said, "Apart from fixed temperature measurement, T1 can provide portable, distant and prompt temperature checking, which would be a great help." And the company says that it is working to upgrade the glasses so that it can take temperature readings of up to four people at one time, a perfect feature for tracking people in malls and airports. One office building in Hangzhou replaced a dedicated temperature stand with the T1 Thermal Glasses so that a large number of employees returning to work could be quickly screened.

Jin Keli, president of Greentown Property Management said, "With more new products coming out, especially these glasses, we think we can use them to conduct contactless temperature measurement, they are very efficient when faced with a big crowd of people." The T1 can read the temperatures of up to 200 people within 2 minutes from a distance of just under 10-feet away.

The company has an office in San Francisco and is working on deals to sell the glasses in the U.S. to law enforcement, hospitals, and businesses. The T1 can also be used for facial recognition. While most likely see the T1 as a helpful tool in the fight against COVID-19, in 50% of the cases in China, a person that tested positive for coronavirus did not have a fever.

These days, devices from China are assumed by U.S. lawmakers and regulators to be spying on behalf of the communist Chinese government. Rokid’s U.S. Director Liang Guan makes it clear that no data from the glasses are sent to the cloud. He said, "Regarding this module…we do not take any data to the cloud. For customers, privacy is very important to them. The data measurement is stored locally."