Lory Gil, iMore:

Coming soon to iOS 14.2, alongside iPhone 12 Pro, and soon iPhone 12 Pro Max, Apple is introducing another amazing new accessibility technology that makes fantastic use of the LiDAR scanner. It’s called People Detection, and it is astounding.

And:

People Detection uses People Occlusion in ARKit and the LiDAR scanner on the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max, as well as the iPad Pro. The LiDAR scanner measures the distance from the device to objects within 15 feet, in real-time. Then combining this data with People Occlusion with ARKit to determine if there are any people in the field of view and then gives continuous feedback about how far away that person is.

Important distinction: The iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max support People Detection, the iPhone 12 and mini do not.

Read the rest of Lory’s post for details.

From this post by Stephen Aquino:

The goal is to help the visually impaired understand their surroundings—examples include knowing how many people there are in the checkout line at the grocery store, how close one is standing to the end of the platform at the subway station, and finding an empty seat at a table.

And:

Users can set a minimum distance for alerts—say, six feet for the aforementioned social distancing—as well as having an option to use haptic feedback to deliver those notifications. There also is audible feedback; if a person is wearing one AirPod, they will be notified when they’re in close proximity of a person or whatnot. People Detection is fully compatible with VoiceOver, Apple’s screen-reader technology.