By James Blackman
Premiership rugby club Wasps has installed a thermal imaging camera from Vodafone UK at its training facility to safeguard players, staff, and visitors as they return to training during the coronavirus pandemic.
The installation comes as rugby clubs return to non-contact training in England, subject to social distancing, daily screening, cleaning and hygiene requirements.
The ‘heat detection camera’ from Vodafone is located at the main entrance to the club’s Broadstreet training ground in Coventry, in the West Midlands. It will screen the body temperature of everyone coming into the ground.
The camera can screen the body temperature of up to 100 people per minute and is accurate to within +/- 0.3 degrees Celsius. Thermal images are streamed to a laptop or mobile device, where analytics software issues an alert if a person has a raised temperature.
The device is part of Vodafone UK’s smart vision IoT portfolio. It comes with a laptop and tablet, full installation, and a 24/7 secure managed service to cater for organisations with extended working hours.
The managed service monitors the system infrastructure and dispatches field if a camera fails. The camera is available on a 12-month term at £1,711 (excluding VAT) per month. Other pricing models are available, said Vodafone.
The UK operator’s smart vision portfolio of IoT smart surveillance solutions also includes a body-worn camera for police officers, healthcare professionals, and field engineers, and a smart city surveillance solution.
The body-worn camera allows “front line operators” to film every incident, to live stream at the touch of a button, and to retrieve footage in HD either onsite or remotely. All footage is watermarked and stored securely.
The smart city solution is a connected digital encoder that fits to existing surveillance infrastructure. It allows high-definition footage to be captured, and even live-streamed to a remote desktop, facilitating the security of utilities, public spaces and buildings. All footage is watermarked and stored securely.
Vodafone has worked with UK smart surveillance provider Digital Barriers on the suite. All the solutions operate over Vodafone’s LTE and 5G based “IoT network”, the company said.
Vodafone is the main club partner for Wasps Rugby, and also Wasps Netball, under the terms of a two year deal signed at the end of 2019. Vodafone’s logo is featured on the front of Wasps Rugby’s latest shirt. It has handled 5G coverage at the Ricoh Arena, where Wasps play, including for augmented reality (AR) half-time entertainment services.
