IIT Kharagpur students develop social distancing tracking device for use at crowded sites

Implementing social distancing as a way of containing the spread of COVID-19 is of key importance.

But in a country as densely populated as India, it is a difficult task indeed for the administration.

Therefore, according to a release by the prestigious institution, their students  have developed a device which can visually detect the gap between individuals and play a proximity alert sound through audio output, for any violation of the social distancing norms.

The device uses images in the field view of a camera and computes the distance as per criterion set by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Team AGV, working under the Centre of Excellence for Robotics Research and led by Prof. Debashish Chakravarty and Prof. Aditya Bandopadhyay, has engineered this device leveraging readily-available hardware while the lockdown was in place.

The group also worked with experts from other areas including Prof Siddhartha Mukhopadhyay, Prof Surjya K Pal and Prof Samir K Pal.

“Our objective was to ensure that we are able to manufacture the device and not merely put forward a design due to the lockdown situation. We further focused on the ease of deployment even in remote locales and curtailing the cost by using inexpensive and easily accessible hardware stack,” said the AGV innovators.

The researchers are confident that the device would find its utility in maintaining the social distancing norms in locations attracting crowds and queues such as markets, malls etc.

It has already been successfully tested with installations of three prototypes at the marketplace of the IIT Kharagpur campus according to the team.

Prof. V K Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur, said, “While we are working on national mission projects related to COVID-19 healthcare, we are simultaneously working on frugal innovations to cater to the immediate needs at our campus in particular and the country in general, keeping in mind cost and product delivery period. Our researchers including the students are committed to deliver such technologies within a constrained timeline considering the healthcare and community needs in the current situation.”