As Uganda faces its first COVID-19 death today, several African countries have announced the use of an innovative smart helmet to help combat the spread of COVID-19. The KC N901 Smart Helmet enables officials to identify individuals with a high fever – the most common COVID-19 symptom – with 96% accuracy.
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The next-generation headset can be paired with contact-tracing apps, helping to provide a more detailed and accurate overview of the spread of COVID-19. It reminds us of the 2019 April 1st fools day joke in the tweet below.
With South Africa declaring an increased rate of infections, the KC N901 Smart Helmet – which has already been deployed widely in Europe, South America, the Middle East, and Asia – provides health officials with an efficient way of quickly and reliably isolating individuals with symptoms, which can also streamline testing. The helmet is currently being used by police, at hospitals and major transport hubs in South Africa, Algeria, Egypt, and Gabon.

The KC N901 Smart Helmet is able to scan up to 200 people per minute, the helmet offers a quick and accurate alternative to traditional thermal cameras. The wearable headset improves the efficiency and flexibility of COVID-19 screening.
KC N901 Smart Helmet Specs
The KC N901 Smart Helmet is powered by an ARM Cortex A53 8-core 2.5Hz processor supported by a DDR 4GB RAM chip running on the Android 8.1 Operating System. It weighs 1.135kgs. It supports 35 degrees field of view with 384 by 288 display resolution counting up to 300 nits of brightness.
It has a 13-megapixel camera with F 2.0 aperture with a 1080 p at 30 frames per second video resolution. When it comes to communication the Helmet has WiFi 802.11 b/g/n , 2.4 GHz plus Bluetooth 4.2 supporting BLE (power-saving Bluetooth technology).
Powered by sophisticated facial recognition technology and an infrared camera, the KC N901 Smart Helmet visor’s thermo-scan sensors show the temperature of people within a seven-meter radius and has the potential to link up to other data on COVID-19 tracking apps. The device stores all data itself with a 64GB internal memory.