Coronavirus: DJI Uses Cotton Swab To Improve Temperature Measuring

It may be possible that DJI might have found a low-tech way to improve its high-tech drones’ ability to measure temperatures amid Coronavirus outbreak.

Coronavirus epidemic prevention includes remotely checking residents’ temperatures using thermal-imaging drones. So DJI has taken action to improve the measurements’ precision with its Mavic 2 Enterprise drone. Wondering about what’s the tool? It’s a humble cotton swab.

The engineers of DJI found that equipping their drones with a cotton swab to improve the accuracy when measuring one person’s temperature. The cotton swab here acts as a reference for the thermal imaging camera calibration.

Before, the accuracy could be off by around 4 to 5 Celsius degree. With the swab, the margin of error can be reduced to only 0.5 Celsius degree under standard conditions.

The Mavic 2 Enterprise drone has a FLIR Lepton thermal microcamera. However, the drone was for industrial use, which means it wasn’t designed to measure body temperature. And the cotton swab became helpful in improving the accuracy of the camera. However, DIJ doesn’t recommend using the drone for this purpose.

According to DJI, it took the engineering team three days to come up with the solution involving the cotton swab. The company still recommends deploying professional medical equipment. DJI is still figuring out new ways to fight the deadly Coronavirus with their tech.

When the drone detects someone is having a fever, the abnormality in the person’s temperature is shown on the UAV remote control screen.

DJI’s drones have been used for temperature detecting purposes in many communities as well as road checkpoints. But it is not the only to use drones in the battle as authorities have also deployed UAVs to spray disinfectant over roads as well as dispersing public gatherings and helping with the building of some temporary hospitals in Wuhan.

>>> How Drones Are Used In The Fight Against Coronavirus