Hopefully we are all remaining vigilant about washing our hands properly: 20 seconds of scrubbing, lots of lather, getting in between fingers and under nails. Perhaps you have a favorite song you play along in your head or some other tactic to make sure hands are clear of COVID-19.
As restaurants re-open, making sure servers and other employees follow proper hygiene practices will be critical in helping minimize the spread of coronavirus. One potential way restaurants and other foodservice companies could do that is with new handwashing monitor artificial intelligence (AI) developed by Fujitsu.
Reuters reports today that Fujitsu’s AI watches a person’s hands as they are being washed. From that story:
Fujitsu’s AI checks whether people complete a Japanese health ministry six-step hand washing procedure that like guidelines issued by the WHO asks people to clean their palms, wash their thumbs, between fingers and around their wrists, and scrub their fingernails.
While the tech can’t identify someone from their hands, it could be tied in with some other identifier. to monitor whether an individual employee washed up well enough.
Fujitsu’s AI is part of a larger wave of technology being implemented to ensure good hygiene in restaurants. PathSpot’s device visible fluorescent spectroscopy to check employee hands after they wash up to detect pathogens. And last year in the Shaoxing Province of China, restaurants started installing AI systems to look for unsanitary practices.
Whether or not you are ready for restaurants to re-open, they are, and will continue to. Those that do will have to spend almost as much time and resources on sanitation of their establishments as they do on the quality of their food.
