Elevated hazards are detected not by the naked eye but in advance by OpenMV using AI

Falling object incidents often stem from small, long-ignored cracks and aging issues. Manual inspections are time-consuming, high-risk, and unable to detect changes in a timely manner. OpenMV proactively identifies façade hazards through continuous visual monitoring.

In densely built-up urban environments with numerous high-rise buildings, aging façades, expanding cracks, or localized spalling—when not detected promptly—can easily lead to safety incidents such as falling objects from height, posing serious risks to personnel and property.

However, traditional façade inspections primarily rely on manual visual checks or high-altitude operations, resulting in long inspection cycles, low coverage frequency, high operational risks, and inconsistent subjective judgments—making it difficult to meet the requirements of continuous safety supervision. By introducing SingTown’s OpenMV intelligent cameras, façade safety inspections can be upgraded from “intermittent manual inspections” to “continuous online visual monitoring.”

The camera can be installed at fixed monitoring points around a building or mounted on lifting devices or inspection equipment to capture images of critical areas of the building’s façade at predefined intervals. OpenMV runs edge detection, texture variation analysis, and crack feature extraction algorithms on the camera’s edge device to analyze subtle structural features on the wall surface and compare them against historical images, thereby identifying abnormal changes such as crack propagation, surface spalling, and localized damage.

Leveraging the continuous comparison capability of edge-side AI, the system can not only detect whether an issue exists but also determine whether the issue is progressively worsening. All identification processes are performed entirely on the OpenMV edge device, with only critical results—such as the location of anomalies and trend information—being output. This significantly reduces the transmission requirements for raw image and video data, thereby lowering system bandwidth and storage demands, and providing property management or operations and maintenance units with clear, actionable maintenance decision support.

Leveraging OpenMV’s on-device AI capabilities and edge deployment advantages, exterior façade safety management for high-rise buildings has shifted from “post-incident investigation” to “proactive early warning,” effectively enhancing urban operational safety.