Hazards at height are not detected by the naked eye; OpenMV uses AI to detect them in advance

Falls of objects from heights are often caused by small cracks and aging issues that have been neglected for long periods. Manual inspections are time-consuming, risky, and incapable of detecting changes promptly. OpenMV reveals façade hazards in advance through continuous visual monitoring.

In urban environments with dense 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 heights, 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 Technology’s OpenMV intelligent camera, 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 the building or mounted on lifting devices or inspection equipment to capture images of critical areas of the façade according to a predefined schedule. OpenMV runs edge detection, texture variation analysis, and crack feature extraction algorithms on the camera’s edge side to analyze subtle structural details on the wall surface and compare them with historical images to identify 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, outputting only key results such as the location of abnormal areas and trend analysis—significantly reducing the need to transmit raw image and video data, thereby lowering bandwidth and storage demands on the system and providing property management or operations and maintenance units with clear, actionable maintenance decision support.

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