Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham University, located at Ettimadai in the outskirts, is developing a smart building as part of the Smart City initiative being implemented in the city.

“We are converting an existing building into a smart building using hardware and software frameworks. Our team has developed algorithms to make the building thoroughly functional as a smart building, with various facilities embedded into it,” said Dr. Latha Parameshwaran, HOD, Computer Science Department.

“Vision technology consisting of sensor and camera technologies is being widely used to develop definite algorithms with the help of 20 odd cameras in the building. For example, if a specific part of the building gets overcrowded during a meeting or event, the sensors can detect it easily to help ease the overcrowding,” she said.

Automated processes to control the building’s operations, such as air-conditioning, ventilation, lighting and security, will be in place too. Moreover, the smart building would be immune to fire accidents and electrical bursts. “If an electrical burst or fire breakout occurs in a corner of the building, the sensors and cameras will help detect the smoke and fix the problem.”

“A network of over 25 cameras and sensors would be used in the smart building, which is being funded by the Department of Science and Technology (under the Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India).”

A very interesting feature of the smart building is unique software which is used to find original photographs from fake ones. And technology is leveraged to not only find the genuineness of a given photo but also to find the origin of the photo – the camera which was used to capture it.

“Photorealism is being increasingly used in memes and other art forms, so we do not know which one is based on real photographs. This technology will find the real photos from the fake ones,” Dr. Latha said.

“The work is progressing; we have identified a building and we’re working to convert it into a smart building, which is much harder task than designing a new one,” Dr. Latha added.