Many people have experienced or witnessed the heart-stopping moment when a friend or family member suddenly dives into a pool to save a toddler who has accidentally ended up in the water. In these moments, the rescued child coughs for a few minutes and everyones’ heartbeats slowly start to return to normal after the tragedy is averted. Sadly, many other people are not as fortunate in avoiding such tragedy.
According to a study by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), most drownings involving children aged 4 and under occur in home swimming pools. In the majority of these cases, children weren’t expected to be in — or even near — the pool at all. Of the drownings surveyed, children were thought to still be in the house roughly half of the time. Now, AI technology experts are seeking to improve pool safety measures and help families completely avoid such a terrifying event.
The future of pool safety is evolving, thanks to one company responsible for integrating AI with home video surveillance technology. PoolScout is helping parents maintain better peace of mind by providing them with innovative safety technology to help monitor children and pets around their home’s pool. PoolScout’s AI-powered surveillance systems can detect when people are present, and can distinguish between children, adults, and even pets 24/7 in real-time.
“PoolScout has been designed from the ground up to be the best and most advanced pool monitoring system for maximum peace of mind,” says Sam Weitzman, Creator of PoolScout and founder of Deep Innovations.
Other pool alarms are often inserted inside or around the parameter of a pool, only to be triggered once a child has already fallen into the water. For instance, standard pool entry alarms operate with sensors that can detect when a person or object enters the pool. Some of the alarms include wave detection sensors to alert homeowners for when their pool’s water is disturbed, but must be positioned inside the pool or around the pool’s entry points. After the alarm is used, it must be reset, with some alarms needing to wait for the water to calm before being repositioned.
These “trigger alarms” are not designed to learn how to improve, nor can they immediately alert any applicable or appropriate emergency contacts with actionable responses. All of these alternatives fail to do one crucial thing: alert parents of an unattended child before they’re even near the edge of the pool, let alone fallen in. It’s not unthinkable that these alarms are triggered after having been set months or years prior, causing parents and pet owners to forget what the alarm was intentionally meant to signal, thereby costing precious seconds to save a life.
The live stream feature of PoolScout’s app allows users to quickly decide on how to react. When an unsafe scenario is detected, the app displays the most relevant actions you might need to perform and your predetermined emergency contacts, enabling users to reach those people when it matters most.
“PoolScout is the only cloud-based system that can perform advanced real-time analytics and constantly detect and track each person in and around the pool,” says Weitzman.
People concerned the technology will not perform consistently don’t need to worry either; with AI-technology, PoolScout is designed to learn through each scenario it triggers an alert to improve its detection abilities. The unique AI integrated with the video surveillance tech uses proprietary core algorithms and neural networks to run real-time video analytics. This means the cameras are constantly improving, learning from previous detections and new use cases.
“When someone reports a false alert through the app, the system gradually learns and is constantly improving,” says Weitzman.
If an event is reported as a false alert, the AI instantly learns from this correction to improve future detections. For example, PoolScout will determine a toddler is unattended if detected in the pool area with no adult in sight. For instance, swimmers detected underwater for more than 10 seconds may be flagged as in danger. Overtime, PoolScout learns how to differentiate when this scenario is an actual threat versus when seasoned swimmers are simply making laps in the pool.
