Pininfarina, globally reputed for industrial design and mobility owned majorly by Mahindra & Mahindra, has entered into a strategic partnership with Milan-based AI start-up Blimp to come up with integrated, ready-to-use solutions for the post-COVID-19 era.

Together, Pininfarina and Blimp offer a solution that integrates physical and digital design, technology and services to analyse gatherings of people and thus making it possible to verify and monitor the application of anti-COVID-19 containment measures in indoor and outdoor settings like public transport, airports, stations, offices, factories, shops and large-scale retailers.

As per the agreement, Pininfarina will dress Blimp technology, integrating it into its architectural and industrial design for the proposed Beat-19 solution.

In addition, the Pininfarina Experience Design team will deploy the solution in public transport vehicles and spaces as well as interfaces (apps, displays, LED walls) dedicated to company personnel and end users.

“Design, which has the ability to innovate continuously while enhancing the lives of people in normal times, can provide the response to imagining a new future,” Silvio Angori, CEO, Pininfarina said in a statement.

“Now design also needs to be used to awaken feelings of protection. The ‘humanization of tech’ will make people feel re-assured ... in the way we live, we move, we conduct business,” he said.

“Together with Blimp we can offer a solution that perfectly meets the needs of the New Normal: designing new spaces and equipping them with digital measuring systems making people feel safer,” he added.

“Our partnership with Pininfarina is an extraordinary union between Italian design and technology”, said Alex Buzzetti, founder, Blimp.

“It is an important step towards the creation of sustainable and intelligent urban environments, permeated by micro-services enabled by Artificial Intelligence technologies and dedicated to improving well-being and quality of life,” he added.

Beat-19 is a solution which is able to monitor the presence of people and ensures that measures to contain the spread of the virus are applied.

This technology makes it possible in real time to detect excessive groups of people in public spaces and induces them to disperse by way of acoustic signals.

It monitors queues of people outside a building or at bus, train or subway stops, and counts the number of accesses; measures body temperature and ensures the use of face masks in order to report the presence of subjects at risk.

It records the application of security measures, especially social distancing, for example, of staff working in offices or production plants, so that immediate action can be taken.

The technology consists of a sensor for the detection of data and a cloud platform so that the data can be viewed and notifications of critical situations(e.g. gatherings of people or absence of face masks) managed.

Depending on needs, the sensor can be fitted with a thermal imaging camera to detect body temperature and a speaker to play audio messages and/or acoustic signals to facilitate people dispersion without anyone having to physically intervene.

The integration of Beat-19 technology with Pininfarina’s architecture and industrial design solutions slots into a research process that the Pininfarina architecture team began weeks ago with the aim of identifying and designing solutions capable of transforming the different spaces in which everyday life will resume in the post-COVID-19 world.