New Delhi: Are you finding it difficult to maintain the mandatory one metre distance from other people to avoid coronavirus infection? Do you forget to wash your hands regularly? An engineering student in Punjab claims to have found a solution for all such problems.
Prabin Kumar Das of Lovely Professional University (LPU) has developed a device named ‘kawach’ (shield) which vibrates and glows in case someone breaches the user’s safe space of one metre. The device which can be worn as a pendant comes equipped with a ‘hand wash reminder’ feature that beeps every 30 minutes to remind the user to wash his/her hands. It also has a temperature sensor that sends an alert to the user through SMS in case his/her body temperature crosses the prescribed limit.
“Kawach is a low cost and easy to carry device that comprises of an LED, vibrator, controller, battery, human body temperature sensor, ultrasonic sensor, switch and a storage card,” Das said Wednesday.
“I noticed that people were finding it so difficult to maintain safe distance despite knowing how important it is. I thought the reminders we are giving each other are not enough and we need a constant reminder, hence I worked on the pendant,” added Das.
The device once commercialised will be available at a price of around Rs 500 and if produced in bulk can be a made available at Rs 400.
According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, social distancing is a non-pharmaceutical infection prevention and control intervention implemented to avoid or decrease contact between those who are infected with a disease-causing pathogen and those who are not, so as to stop or slow down the rate and extent of disease transmission in a community.
“While the whole world is grappling to find a vaccine for COVID-19, ‘kawach’ is our effort to contain the spread of this deadly virus,” said Lovi Raj Gupta, Executive Dean of Science and Technology at LPU. “We have already tested it internally and are now looking for the right partners to commercialise it,” he added.
Das was supervised by faculty members at the university, including Rajesh Singh, Anita Gehlot and Varun Panwar.
According to Ritesh Behel, who runs a pharmacy store in Janakpuri, “The device can be of good help to those who are involved in essential services as they also need to maintain adequate distance which is generally not happening because there are too many customers and we often forget.”
However, people involved in essential services believe that the device will only be of help if it is available soon in market.
PTI