Engineering Company Fights Pandemic with the Help of AI : A Lisburn-based engineering company has introduced AI and thermal imaging in a bid to help companies across Ireland increase detection and protect their workforces during the pandemic.

Integrated Process Control & Engineering (IPCE) repurposed its technology and, as a partner for Hikvision’s thermal and optical bi-spectrum camera range, is now able to detect symptomatic individuals that risk potential infection when working on-site.

It screens workers for a raised temperature, one of the key symptoms of coronavirus.

The Unicorn Group installed IPCE’s technology eight weeks ago across its 266,000 sq ft manufacturing and administrative facility in Lambeg, with managing director Roger Pannell saying: “We moved to take extra steps in addition to government health and safety guidance to reduce the probability factor of infection rate and reassure our staff to feel more comfortable and confident in the work place.

“A high temperature is one of the symptoms of Covid-19 and the thermal imaging solution provides one layer of peace of mind to help mitigate the risk to our staff and is helping to keep our business operational during the pandemic.”

Conor Kearney, managing director of IPCE, added: “Since Covid-19 arrived on the island of Ireland, demand for technologies that promise to detect symptomatic individuals has been exceptionally high.

“Early on in the pandemic, we recognised the significance and benefits of thermal screening technology in major cities across Asia and worked fast to utilise our core competencies as a control systems developer to offer the same systems to our customer base in Ireland.”

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