Indonesian Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Vol. 24, No. 3, December 2021, pp. 1550~1556 ISSN: 2502-4752, DOI: 10.11591/ijeecs.v24.i3.pp1550-1556  1550 Journal homepage: http://ijeecs.iaescore.com Applications of artificial intelligence with cloud computing in promoting social distancing to combat COVID-19 Mohammed Ghadhban Al-Hamiri, Hayder Fadhil Abdulsada, Laith A. Abdul-Rahaim Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Babylon, Hillah, Iraq Article Info ABSTRACT Article history: Received Apr 3, 2021 Revised Oct 12, 2021 Accepted Oct 18, 2021 The emergence of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) disease and its rapid spread around the world has serious impacts on people's lives in addition to its effects on many aspects, including the economic and educational sectors. Researches have proved that social distance is effective in combating COVID-19. Maintaining social distance is hard to be handled by humans especially in crowded areas such as airports and campuses. So, there is a need to apply a robust and proactive design to manage this process automatically and smartly. This paper presents a design system to fight COVID-19 by maintaining the social distance with effective monitoring for suspected cases. This has been done using cloud computing and a framework including Arduino (node microcontroller unit (NodeMCU)) with several sensors. The operational aspects of this design system using cloud computing have been discussed. Generally, NodeMCU has been involved in checking the conditions, comparison processing, and communication with the webserver. Moreover, the webserver has been used for determining the maximum number of persons allowed to enter. The results state that this design system is effective in combating COVID-19 through maintaining the social distance and collecting information about suspected cases. This system is valuable, dependable, and stable since the whole process is contactless. Keywords: Artificial intelligence Cloud computing COVID-19 Social distancing This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA license. Corresponding Author: Mohammed Ghadhban Al-Hamiri Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Babylon Hillah City, Babil, Iraq Email: m.ghadhban@uobabylon.edu.iq 1. INTRODUCTION The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been spread over the world creating a serious challenge to humanity. Researchers are trying to contribute in combating this pandemic through new technologies such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence [1], [2]. Concepts, principles, and definitions do not change with time to some extent, unlike scientific research that is constantly developing. The definition of the term cloud computing varies for different researchers. Gartner defines cloud computing as a type of computing in which a large number of customers are given the ability to manage information technology (IT) applications with wide potential through an internet service [3]. The term cloud computing refers to any service provided to the cloud customer and it includes a wide range of useful applications that can be accessed anywhere and anytime on the basis of demand. The National Institute of Standards and Metrology Technology (NIST) defines cloud computing as an access model for computing resources that are available to share on-demand across the network such as servers, storage, software, and infrastructure that can be provided and released quickly with minimal administrative effort or in cooperation with a service provider [4], [5].